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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



OF ENGLISH TEXTS 
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HENRY VAN DYKE 

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SKETCH OF CHARLES LAMB BY MACLISE 

" The sketch of him in Eraser's Magazine gives a true idea of his figure, 
but no portrait, I am sure, could do justice to his splendid countenance." 

— J. Fuller Russell. 



GATEWAY SERIES 



SELECT ESSAYS OF ELIA 

BY 

CHARLES LAMB 

EDITED BY 

JOHN F. GENUNG 

PROFESSOR IN AMHERST COLLEGE " 




NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 






Copyright, 1909, by 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 

select essays of elia. 

W. P.I. 



©CI.A253224 



GENERAL EDITOR'S NOTE 

This series of books aims, first, to give the English texts 
required for entrance to college in a form which shall make 
them clear, interesting, and helpful to those who are beginning 
the study of literature ; and, second, to supply the knowledge 
which the student needs to pass the entrance examination. 
For these two reasons it is called The Gatezvay Sej'ies. 

The poems, plays, essays, and stories in these small vol- 
umes are treated, first of all, as works of literature, which were 
written to be read and enjoyed, not to be parsed and scanned 
and pulled to pieces. A short life of the author is given, and 
a portrait, in order to help the student to know the real person 
who wrote the book. The introduction tells what it is about, 
and how it was written, and where the author got the idea, 
and what it means. The notes at the foot of the page are 
simply to give the sense of the hard words so that the student 
can read straight on without turning to a dictionary. The 
other notes, at the end of the book, explain difficulties and 
allusions and fine points. 

The editors are chosen because of their thorough training 
and special fitness to deal with the books committed to them, 
and because they agree with this idea of what a Gateway 
Series ought to be. They express, in each case, their own 
views of the books which they edit. Simphcity, thorough- 
ness, shortness, and clearness, — > these, we hope, will be the 
marks of the series. 

HENRY VAN DYKE. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 7 

Introduction : 

I. Life and Livelihood 10 

II. Where his Life's Real Interests Lay . , .11 

III. Some Traits of his Personality .... 13 

IV. The Essays of Elia . . . . . .18 

List of Select Essays: 

I. Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago 

{London Magazine, Nov. 1820) . . .21 
— II. Mackery End, in Hertfordshire (Z. M., July 1821) 42 

III. My First Play (Z. M., Dec. 1821) . . .50 

IV. Barbara S (Z. AT., Apr. 1825. From Last 

Essays) ........ 57 

V. The South-Sea House (Z. M., Aug. 1820) . . 65 
VI. Oxford in the Vacation (Z. M., Oct. 1820) . . 77 
^1\. Poor Relations (Z. M., May 1823. From Last 

Essays) .... . . . . '^'] 

VIII. Imperfect Sympathies (Z. M,, Aug. 1 821) . . 97 
IX. Old China (Z. /!Z, Mar. 1823. From Last Essays) 109 

—_ _^^ Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading 

(Z. M., July 1822. From Last Essays) . .118 
XI. Grace Before Meat (Z. M., Nov. 1821) . . 127 
XII. A Dissertation upon Roast Pig (Z. M., Sept. 

1822) 138 

XIII. The Praise of Chimney-Svi'eepers (/.. M., May 

1822) 149 

XIV. Dream-Children; A Reverie (Z. A/., Jan. 1822) . 160 
— XV. The Superannuated Man (Z. M.^ May 1825. From 

Last Essays) . . . . . . . 166 

Notes '177 

6 



PREFACE 

Charles Lamb's distinction as the best-loved of Eng- 
lish authors may fitly suggest the chief aim of the edi- 
torial work that has been done for this edition of his 
select Essays. It is with Charles Lamb himself, his 
personality, as represented in his sympathies, his friend- 
liness and charity, his odd yet winning tastes, his deli- 
cate and kindly humour, that we become acquainted 
as we read. He did not write these essays to convey 
circumstantial information ; if we look for this, indeed, 
we find ourselves, as likely as not, quite at sea about 
such factual things as names, places, and dates. We do 
not read him for information or didactic instruction, but 
for something finer and better, something that, beyond 
the reading, inspires in us a love for the man himself. 

Accordingly, the object of the appended notes is, first, 
to promote the student's interest in the essay itself, and 
in what the author has at heart, rather than in something 
extraneous — grammar or philology or items of history 
— which may serve to make the reading not a pleasure 
but a task-work set for eventual examination. Secondly, 
the notes, as means to this end, shall aim to bring out, 
for students of the grade contemplated in this series, 
such literary ways as serve to mirror the spirit of the 
text ; for the writer's mood finds its fitting manner of 
expression, in which every word and phrase has its 
value. Charles Lamb is a delightful man to know ; and 
7 



8 Preface 

it is hoped that this edition may, while it helps the 
reader to know him better, inspire the wish to continue 
the acquaintance. 

The text here followed is the text of the first col- 
lected edition: Essays of Elia, 1823, Last Essays of 
Elia, 1833. The spelling has been for the most part 
conformed to the general usage of the Gateway Series ; 
Lamb's peculiarities of punctuation, however, have been 
followed, because they are so truly a part of his style. 
In the preparation of the notes, special acknowledg- 
ment is due to the definitive edition of Mr. E. V. Lucas, 
who has laid all succeeding editors of Lamb under obli- 
gation for the research work he has saved them, — 
work which, while it had to be done, in the nature of 
the case needed only once doing. The editor is in- 
debted also to the kindness of Messrs. G. P. Putnam's 
Sons, publishers of the Lucas edition of Lamb's works 
and of Lucas's Life of Charles Lamb^ for permission to 
use as frontispiece Machse's sketch portrait. 



INTRODUCTION 

It is not by eminence of style or passion or thought 
that Charles Lamb's writings, and especially his Essays 
of EHa, make their distinctive impress on English litera- 
ture. It is rather by what they reveal of a very peculiar 
yet, with all untoward traits, a very sterling and lovable 
personality. We seem as we read to be in the presence, 
not of an author concerned to give his ideas a good lit- 
erary showing, but of a very companionable man whose 
words frankly reflect his personal likes and dislikes, his 
individual tastes, whims, fancies, oddities, nay his very 
weaknesses and faults ; and all with such geniality and 
charm as to have earned for their author the distinction 
of being the best-loved man in English letters. 

This love is accorded to Charles Lamb ; and yet the 
personality whose thoughts and sentiments are so freely 
uttered masks itself under an assumed name. It pro- 
fesses to speak, not as Charles Lamb, but as James 
Elia ; and thus the author holds himself free to take 
liberties with literal fact and with actualities of persons 
and places. More than this. While James Elia is ac- 
curately Charles Lamb and not in any artistic sense a 
dramatized person speaking in character, yet he is not 



lo Essays of Elia 

all of Charles Lamb ; he is only so much as his author 
chooses to reveal. And of Charles Lamb's real Hfe he 
hides as much as he reveals ; hides, for a cardinal in- 
stance, a constant experience which made his whole life 
a tragedy. Of this, as he is reticent about it or passes 
it off in jest, our introduction must speak, because its 
effects in the tone of Ella's style are subtle and profound. 
Other characteristic things, too, in the life of Charles 
Lamb as distinguished from James Elia naust come up for 
mention before the Essays are left to speak for them- 
selves. 



Life and Livelihood. — The external facts and condi- 
tions of Charles Lamb's life are soon told. The son of 
John Lamb, a clerk or private secretary to a bencher of 
the Inner Temple, he was born in Crown Office Rov/, 
London, February lo, 1775. In his eighth year he 
became a blue-coat boy in the famous charity-school of 
Christ's Hospital, and remained there for seven years, 
during which time his most intimate friendship, a friend- 
ship terminated only by death, was with Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge, the " inspired charity-boy," afterwards the 
famous poet and philosopher. Precluded by an impedi- 
ment of speech, and perhaps by temperament, from 
promise of success in the church or the learned profes- 
sions, Lamb gave up the idea of going to the university. 
After leaving school in 1789, he in his turn, though not 
till nearly two years had passed, became a clerk ; work- 



Introduction ii 

ing first in the South-Sea House under his elder brother 
John for six months; then, through the influence of his 
father's kind employer Samuel Salt, obtaining a clerk- 
ship in the accountant's office of the East India Com- 
pany. Here he worked, advancing through various 
grades of promotion, until at fifty years of age he was 
retired on a pension, and became — as he described it — 
a " superannuated man." He lived nine years after this, 
years not so happy as those of his clerkship, and died 
December 27, 1834. 



II 



Where his Life's Real Interests Lay. — There is no 
occasion here to detail the circumstances of the modest 
life that as a London clerk he had to live : the changes 
of lodging, the cares and shifts of narrow means, the 
round of routine in which the best hours of his working 
years were spent. All these we could sufficiently imag- 
ine if they counted for our purpose ; they were the 
conditions of a life in which most men would be content, 
or necessitated by personal limitation, to be clerks and 
nothing more. And his clerkship, at least, supplying 
him a steady income, freed him from the necessity of 
writing for a living, a thing not suited to his genius. It 
was, however, the reaction from the routine of the desk, 
the reaction of native resource and genius, which brought 
Lamb to his true caUing. The world in which we become 
acquainted with him was larger : that inner world of the 



12 Essays of Elia 

heart and the imagination which has no bounds and no 
poverty. The realm of thought and sentiment, to which 
he had been introduced by native taste and the associa- 
tions of school life, remained the sphere of his real inter- 
ests ; he was not a clerk at heart, but a companion of 
literary men, a lover of art, poetry, drama, and a sharer 
in the finest literary values of the ages. 

From his early years he was conversant with books, 
especially books of classic poetry and of the seventeenth 
century literature. His tastes were notably keen for 
works to which age or some eccentricity of the writer 
had given a flavor of quaintness, works like those of . 
Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, 
and Thomas Fuller ; his mind seemed to be formed, 
indeed, much after their pattern. Shakespeare and the 
Jacobean dramatists, also, were great favorites of his. 
For books of history or philosophy or science, or for the 
current movements of thought and event, he had little 
care. " When a new book comes out, I read an old 
one," was the humorous remark by which he defined 
his literary hkings. Of the prosaic and uncoloured facts 
of life he had enough, doubtless, in the dull associations 
of his accountant's office ; and of constant famiharity 
with irksome endurance and domestic anxiety he had, 
as we shall see, more than enough. His literary activi- 
ties were in part a wise recourse and refuge from these, 
an escape to the inner world of the spirit. 

He wrote as he could command time and occasion : 
some poetry, but mostly prose, for which his genius was 



Introduction 13 

better adapted ; a story of quiet and somewhat sombre 
sentiment, Rosamund Gray ; two or tliree unsuccessful 
plays, better fitted for reading than for the stage ; tales 
from the Odyssey re-told for children, tales from Shake- 
speare also for children, written in collaboration with his 
sister ; and some very penetrative critical estimates of 
the Elizabethan dramatists, which won him an eminent 
place among critics for his power to interpret the finer 
spirit of literature. 

The work, however, by which he is best known and for 
which he is most loved is the Essays of Elia, and Later 
Essays of Elia, contributed to the London Magazine 
from 1820 to 1825, and later collected in two volumes. 
In these his peculiar genius, coming late to flower, found 
its true and inimitable expression ; a genius in the free 
play of which one of the most charming personalities of 
Enghsh literature is revealed. 

Ill 

Some Traits of his Personality. — We do not come to 
these Essays of Elia for the sake of any precise and for- 
mal information, nor for didactic precepts of life and 
conduct ; and yet we find ourselves gaining from them 
direction of a finer and more vital kind ; we find our- 
selves also, we hardly know how, on better terms with 
life. The secret lies in the fact that they are the mirror 
of a personality which, with all its lightness, its whimsey, 
its sly humour, has the sw^eetest and finest elements of 



14 Essays of Elia 

life at heart. , He weaves these essays together out of 
the simplest materials : his childhood experiences, his 
school-days, his old-time friends, l;is chance acquaint- 
ances, casual happenings of his life, quaint fancies, odd 
scraps of reading and quotation ; yet out of these all 
the main effect is that of a kindly personality in whose 
tastes and sentiments we share with delight. It will be 
the task, or rather pleasure, of our reading to enter pro- 
gressively into the spirit of these traits as they appear 
in essay after essay ; so they need not be analysed or 
enlarged upon here. 

In order, however, to understand the man better as 
we read, we may bear in mind some circumstances of 
his literary and domestic life. 

I . And first, as to why and in what sort he turned to 
the literary life at all ; he, to outward seeming, merely 
an accountant with a bent that way. Spending his best 
hours every day in the routine of his clerkship, he must 
needs make his literary pursuits a by-labour, an avoca- 
tion. They had not the system or absorbing strenuous- 
ness of a principal motive, like, for instance. Gibbon's 
devotion to a historic theme or Tennyson's single-minded 
consecration to the great values of poetry ; nor, on the 
other hand, were they work for a living. They dealt 
rather with the incidents and sentiments that come into 
daily life by the way, and come unforced. Lamb's mind 
turned naturally to the quaint old writers of the 
past ; not, however, as an investigator or as a critic ; 
rather in a real affection, in which he dwelt and com- 



Introduction 15 

muned with them as with famihar friends. His relation 
to his books was almost a personal one. Just so with 
his writings, whose personal quality is their chief strain, 
much hke confessions : sentiments of the gentler and more 
delicate kind, in which his humours, his likings, and dis- 
likings, in a word, his personal sympathies, were freely 
reflected. His sympathies, but not in such degree his 
antipathies. It was not in him to be a good hater ; at 
most he could confess to imperfect sympathies. He 
could indeed see keenly into men's weaknesses and fail- 
ings ; but the redeeming traits or the extenuating con- 
ditions were also so sympathetically realized that his 
judgments of human nature w^ere never severe. It was 
not with the great passions of life that he was concerned, 
nor with the romantic sentiments ; rather with the com- 
mon affections, and with the gentle gusts of humour and 
pathos in which the whole world can smile and weep 
together. 

2. As his relation to books was one of affection, so 
also his relation to his personal acquaintances. Noth- 
ing is more salient in Lamb's life than his rare talent 
for friendship. We get a fair idea of the range and 
quality of this from his letters, which, as collected and 
published, are among the not too numerous classics of 
English epistolary literature. A better idea, however, 
is obtained from his famous Wednesday evenings ; an 
institution, if a thing so informal may be thus termed, 
comparable to the well-known Dr. Johnson Club of an 
earlier time. The modest lodgings of Charles and 



1 6 Essays of Elia 

Mary Lamb, wherever they were, were a kind of rally- 
ing place for friends and admirers who lived or happened 
to be stopping in London. There were artists, men of 
thought, and men of letters among them ; such leading 
spirits as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Godwin, 
Manning, Barton, Leigh Hunt, Carey; also a goodly 
proportion of odd or eccentric characters, for whom 
Lamb had an especial fondness and attraction. Here 
all spoke their minds with utmost freedom, and all 
could agree to differ. The things new and old that 
belonged to the prevailing literary spirit of the time 
were here exploited. Nor were these gatherings merely 
a clearing-house of literary ideas. According to the 
free custom of those days, the " plain living and 
high thinking " of the occasion included a strongly 
convivial element, of which Lamb's genial personality 
was the heart and soul. Here we have to mention 
Lamb's chief failing. It must be owned that his love 
of good-fellowship was rather too much for temperate 
habits ; he was too fond of drink. His wit also, and 
his tricksey spirit of reaction against whatever was 
stupid or pretentious, sometimes carried him away, so 
that he was betrayed, especially when mellowed with an 
evening's conviviality, into remarks or conduct which 
belied his real seriousness of mind and kindness of 
heart. None of this, however, was laid up against him, 
or ever alienated a friend. He was his own worst 
enemy, and his very weaknesses were in a w^ay charm- 
ing and lovable. 



Introduction 17 

3. If his manner of speech and his buoyancy of 
humour seemed to indicate, to a superficial or unsym- 
pathetic observer, a certain shallowness or levity of 
character, there was that in his daily life, unspoken yet 
well known to his friends, which disproved all this. 
Here we come to the tragic event which largely deter- 
mined the conditions of Charles Lamb's life, and which 
must be reckoned with in estimating the vital elements 
of his writings. On September 22, 1796, when he was 
in his twenty-second year, his sister Mary, ten years 
older, in a sudden fit of mania killed her mother. She 
recovered her reason, but all her life long (and she 
lived to survive him) was subject to recurrent attacks 
of insanity, which gradually increased in length and 
frequency. To keep her from permanent detention 
in a hospital, Charles gave " his solemn engagement 
that he would take her under his care for life." He 
found her a home in a private family, and after the 
death of his parents brother and sister lived together, 
he giving up the thought of marrying. She is the 
Bridget Elia of his essays, of whom he says, " we house 
together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double 
singleness." A congenial domestic life it was, in which 
the two were quite atone in literary and social interests; 
yet in thinking of it we remember what a Hfelong 
sacrifice he cheerfully and silently underwent for it; we 
think also how often and sadly it was interrupted for 
months at a time by her periods of insanity, when she 
must needs be removed from home. We cannot tax with 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 2 



1 8 Essays of Elia 

levity or frivolity the character of one whose life, under 
the perpetual tension of anxiety, was so nobly lived. 

As we look for the effects of this tragic undercurrent 
of Lamb's life in his works, we find it manifested in 
very peculiar ways, yet psychologically true to human 
nature. His prevaihng lightness, humour, oddity, M^ere 
in effect a reaction, an escape. The criticism has been 
made that he evaded serious things and ignored the 
deep issues of life. There is some colour of truth in the 
charge. But for a man of his temperament — for he him- 
self once had a period of madness — to have brooded on 
his experience, or to have drawn it out into literature, 
would have been his ruin. Doubtless his safety and 
sanity lay in the farthest possible escape from the 
thought and anguish of it. And the escape was made, 
not merely toward eccentricity, nor does the charm of 
his works lie in that ; it was made more truly toward 
the kindliness, the tenderness, the delicate regard for 
the unfortunate, the loving sympathy, which pervade 
his writings. To Carlyle, the strenuous Puritan, he 
might seem almost an imbecile ; to Thackeray, who 
himself knew a similar sorrow, he was " Saint Charles." 

IV 

The Essays of Elia. — The Essays of Elia were con- 
tributed to the London Magazijie; the first one, entitled 
The South-Sea House, appearing in the number for 
August, 1820. Later they were gathered and published 



Introduction 19 

in book form, the first series in 1823, the second in 
1833. As periodical articles they were a very popular 
feature of the Magazine. Only one edition of them in 
book form, however, appeared in the remaining twelve 
years of Lamb's life ; though the editions that have been 
pubhshed since his death are ''practically uncount- 
able." 

For the name Elia (which it seems he pronounced 
Ellia), Lamb took the name of a clerk at the South-Sea 
House, an Italian, whom he had known there. Visiting 
the place afterward in order to laugh with the original 
EHa over his unasked use of the name. Lamb found that 
the clerk had been dead eleven months ; " so," he says, 
" the name has fairly devolved to me, I think ; and 'tis 
all he has left me." 

The essays here selected from Essays of Elia and 
Last Essays of Elia do not follow the order in which 
they were first published in the London Magazine and 
later collected in two volumes. Rather, as they are 
largely in the nature of reminiscence, they will be found 
to follow roughly the course of Lamb's life, from mem- 
ories of school, childhood, and youth, to his retiring from 
his position as clerk in the East India House ; so, first 
seeing him as a boy in Christ's Hospital, w^e leave him 
as he becomes a " Superannuated Man. " Besides these 
papers so charged with autobiographical matter, selec- 
tions VII to XIII form a somewhat like-minded group, 
giving a kind of description of Lamb's ruling tastes and 
sympathies. 



20 Essays of Elia 

In leaving now the essays to speak for themselves, 
we may close this Introduction with a few words from 
E. V. Lucas's Life of Chaises Lamb : ^ — 

" The life of Charles Lamb ... is the narrative of 
one who was a man and brother first, an East India 
clerk next, and a writer afterwards. Hence . . . the 
story is that rather of a private individual who chanced 
to have literary genius than of a man of letters in the 
ordinary sense of the term." 

Of the Essays of Elia Lucas says : — 

" Their ' facts ' are not of the utilitarian order ; 
their humour leads rarely to loud laughter, rather to the 
quiet smile ; they are not stories, they are not poems ; 
they are not difficult enough to suggest ' mental im- 
provement ' to those who count it loss unless they are^ 
puzzled, nor simple enough for those who demand of 
their authors no confounded nonsense. — /At the same 
time English literature has nothing that in its way is 
better than Elia^s best. The blend of sanity, sweet 
reasonableness, tender fancy, high imagination, sym- 
pathetic understanding of human nature, and humour, 
now wistful, now frolicsome, with literary skill of un- 
surpassed delicacy, makes Elia unique." 

1 Lucas, The Life of Charles Lamb, Vol. II, p. 60. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 



FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO 



In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two since, 
I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school/ such as it 
was, or now appears to him to have been, between the 
years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my 
own standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding with 5 
his ; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for 
the cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring together 
whatever can be said in praise of them, dropping all the 
other side of the argument most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that he 10 
had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his 
school-fellows had not. His friends lived in town, and 
were near at hand ; and he had the privilege of going to 
see them, almost as often as he wished, through some 
invidious distinction, which was denied to us. The pres- 15 
ent worthy sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain 
how that happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a 
morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of a 

^ Recollections of Christ's Hospital. [C. L. ] 

The notes which Lamb himself appended to the text, which are 
here numbered continuously with the rest, are marked by the letters 
C. L. in brackets. 



22 Essays of Elia 

penny loaf — our crug^ — moistened with attenuated small 
beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern 
jack it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porridge, 
blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse 
5 and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of 
"extraordinary bread and butter" from the hot-loaf of 
the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, some- 
what less repugnant — (we had three banyan^ to four meat 
days in the week) — was endeared to his palate with a lump 

lo of double-refined,^ and a smack of ginger (to make it go 
down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu 
of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on 
Thursdays (strong as caro equina) j"^ With, detestable mari- 
golds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty 

15 mutton crags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but 
grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted^ or 
rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our 
appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal 
proportion) — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the 

20 more tempting griskin^ (exotics unknown to our palates), 
cooked in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought 
him daily by his maid or aunt ! I remember the good old 
relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting down 

1 This word, which the context defines, is local slang, still in use 
at the school. 

2 Vegetarian. Name of a British navy regulation. 

^ I.e. sugar. * Horse-flesh. ^ I.e. overdone. 

6 "The small bones taken out of the flitch of a bacon-pig." 
Century Dictionary. A provincial English word. 



Christ's Hospital 23 

upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, dis- 
closing the viands (of higher regale than those cates 
which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite); and the 
contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was 
love for the bringer, shame for the thing brought, and the 5 
manner of its bringing ; sympathy for those who were too 
many to share in it ; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, 
strongest of the passions !) predominant, breaking down 
the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a 
troubling over-consciousness. 10 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those 
who should care for me, were far away. Those few ac- 
quaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon 
being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced 
notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my 15 
first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. 
They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought 
them few enough ; and, one after another, they all failed 
me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early 20 
homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have towards 
it in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would 
my native town (far in the west) come back, with its 
church, and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weep- 
ing, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet 25 
Calne in Wiltshire ! 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by 
the recollection of those friendless hoHdays. The long 
warm days of summer never return but they bring with 



24 Essays of Elia 

them a gloom from the haunting memory of those whole- 
day-leaves, when, by some strange arrangement, we were 
turned out, for the livelong day, upon our own hands, 
whether we had friends to go to, or none. I remember 
5 those bathing-excursions to the New River, which L. recalls 
with such rehsh, better, I think, than he can — for he was 
a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such water- 
pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth into the 
fields ; and strip under the first warmth of the sun ; and 

lo wanton^ like young dace in the streams ; getting us appe- 
tites for noon, which those of us that were pennyless (our 
scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the 
means of allaying — while the cattle, and the birds, and the 
fishes, were at feed about us, and we had nothing to sat- 

isisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the day, and the 
exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, setting a 
keener edge upon them ! — How faint and languid, finally, 
we would return, towards nightfall, to our desired morsel, 
half-rejoicing, half- reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy 

20 liberty had expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about 
the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print- 
shops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last 
resort, in the hope of a Httle novelty, to pay a fifty-times 

25 repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as 
well known to the warden as those of his own charges) to 
the Lions in the Tower — to whose lev^e, by courtesy im- 
memorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission. 
1 Note that the word wanton is here used as a verb. 



Christ's Hospital 25 

L.'s governor^ (so we called the patron who presented 
us to the foundation) lived in a manner under his pater- 
nal roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure 
of being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, 
and was an effectual screen to him against the severity of 5 
masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppres- 
sions of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to 
recollection. I have been called out of my bed, and 
waked for the purpose, in the coldest winter nights — and 
this not once, but night after night — in my shirt, to 10 
receive the disciphne of a leathern thong, with eleven 
other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, 
when there has been any talking heard after we were 
gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the dormitory, 
where the youngest children of us slept, answerable for 15 
an offence they neither dared to commit, nor had the 
power to hinder. — The same execrable tyranny drove the 
younger part of us from the fires, when our feet were per- 
ishing with snow ; and, under the crudest penalties, for- 
bade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in 20 
sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and the 
day's sports. 

There was one H ^ who, I learned, in after days^ 

was seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. ^ 

1 Samuel Salt, under whose roof Lamb's father lived; a member 
of Parliament, and a governor of the South-Sea House. 

^ According to a Key v^hich Lamb furnished to some of his 
essays, the name was Hodges. 

^ Old or dismasted ships, formerly used in England for prisons. 



26 Essays of Elia 

(Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the 
planter of that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, or 
St. Kitts, — some few years since? My friend Tobin^ 
was the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the 
5 gallows.) This petty Nero actually bra^ided a boy, who 
had offended him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved 
forty of us, with exacting contributions, to the one half of 
our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it 
may seem, with the connivance of the nurse's daughter 

lo (a young flame of his) he had contrived to smuggle in, 
and keep upon the leads of the wai^d, as they called our 
dormitories. This game went on for better than a week, 
tin the foolish beast, not able to fare well but he must cry 
roast meat — happier than Caligula's minion, could he have 

IS kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas ! than any of 
his species in the fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the 
fullness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs pro- 
claim his good fortune to the world below ; and, laying out 
his simple throat, blew such a ram's horn blast, as (top- 

20 pling down the walls of his own Jericho) set concealment 
any longer at defiance. The chent was dismissed, with 
certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never understood 
that the patron underwent any censure on the occasion. 
This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 

25 Under the same/^r//*? administration, can L. have for- 
gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to 
carry away openly, in open platters, for their own tables, 

1 James Webbe Tobin, of Nevis, died 1814. 



Christ's Hospital 27 

one out of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron 
had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners ? 
These things were daily practised in that magnificent apart- 
ment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) 
praises so highly for the grand paintings " by Verrio, and 5 
others," with which it is " hung round and adorned." But 
the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, 
at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the 
living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions car- 
ried away before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves re- 10 
duced (with the Trojan in the hall of Dido) 
To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, ^ 
or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some 
superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grate- 15 
ful to young palates (children are universally fat-haters) 
and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detest- 
able. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a goul, 

and held in equal detestation. ^ suffered under the 

imputation. 20 

'Twas said 

He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the ■ 
remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice frag- 
ments, you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, 25 
these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away, 

1 A slang word, still current. 

2 Lamb's Key does not supply this name. 



2 8 Essays of Elia 

and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. 
None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that he 
privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, 
but no traces of such midnight practices were discover- 
5 able. Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had been 
seen to carry out of the bounds a large blue check hand- 
kerchief, full of something. This then must be the ac- 
cursed thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine 
how he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the 

lo beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went about 
moping. None spake to him. No one would play with 
him. He was excommunicated ; put out of the pale of the 
school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he 
underwent every mode of that negative punishment which 

15 is more grievous than many stripes. Still he persevered. 
At length he was observed by two of his school-fellows, 
who were determined to get at the secret, and had traced 
him one leave-day for that purpose, to enter a large worn- 
out building, such as there exist specimens of in Chancery 

20 Lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism 
with open door, and a common staircase. After him they 
silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights, 
and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened 
by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now 

25 ripened into certainty. The informers had secured their 
victim. They had him in their toils. Accusation was 
formally preferred and retribution most signal was looked 
for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward (for this happened 
a little after my time), with that patient sagacity which 



Christ's Hospital 29 

tempered all his conduct, determined to investigate the 
matter before he proceeded to sentence. The result was, 
that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers 
of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of 

, an honest couple come to decay, — whom this sea- 5 

sonable supply had, in all probability, saved from mendi- 
cancy ; and that this young stork, at the expense of his 
own good name, had all this while been only feeding the old 
birds ! — The governors on this occasion, much to their 

honour, voted a present relief to the family of , and 10 

presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the 
steward read upon rash judgment, on the occasion of 

publicly delivering the medal to , I believC;, would 

not be lost upon his auditory. — I had left school then, but 

I well remember . He was a tall, shambHng youth, 15 

with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hos- 
tile prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's 
basket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by 
himself, as he had done by the old folks. 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy in 20 
fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, 
was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initia- 
tion. I was of tender years, barely turned of seven ; and 
had only read of such things in books, or seen them but in 
dreams. I was told he had run away. This was the pun- 25 
ishment for the first offence. — As a novice I was soon after 
taken to see the dungeons. These were little, square. Bed- 
lam cells, where a boy could just lie at his length upon 
straw and a blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterwards 



JO Essays of Elia 

substituted — with a peep of light, let in askance, from a 
prison-orifice at top,' barely enough to read by. Here the 
poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without sight of 
any but the porter who brought him his bread and water -7- 
5 who might not speak to him; — or of the beadle ; who came 
twice a week to call him out to receive his periodical chas- 
tisement, which was almost welcome, because it separated 
him for a brief interval from solitude : — and here he was 
shut up by himself of nights, out of the reach of any sound, 

10 to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves, and supersti- 
tion incident to his time of Hfe, might subject him to.^ 
This was the penalty for the second offence. — Wouldst 
thou like. Reader, to see what became of him in the next 
degree ? 

15 The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and 
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was 
brought forth, as at some solemn auto-da-fe^ arrayed in 
uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace of his late 
" watchet^ weeds " carefully effaced, he was exposed in a 

20 jacket, resembhng those which London lamplighters for- 
merly dehghted in, with a cap of the same. The effect 

1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accord- 
ingly, at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part 
of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dis- 
pensed with. — This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of 
Howard's brain; for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) 
methinks, I could willingly spit upon his statue. [C. L.] 

2 Lit. act of faith. The Spanish term for an execution of heretics 
under the Inquisition. 

^ Blue. The phrase taken from an ode by Collins. 



Christ's Hospital ,31 

of this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it 
could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted fea- 
tures, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante 
had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought 
into the hall (^L.^ s favourite state-roovi)^ where awaited him 5 
the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint les- 
sons and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the 
awful presence of the steward, to be seen for the last 
time ; of the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for 
the occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr import, be- 10 
cause never but in these extremities visible. These were 
governors ; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were always 
accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia;'^ not to 
mitigate (so at least we understood it), but to enforce 
the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter 15 
Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one occasion, 
when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy 
was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. The 
scourging was, after the old Roman fashion, long and 
stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal quite round 20 
the hall. We were generally too faint with attending to 
the previous disgusting circumstances, to make accurate 
report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering 
infficted. Report, of course, gave out the back knotty 
and livid. After scourging, he was made over, in his 25 
San Benito^ to his friends, if he had any (but commonly 

1 I.e. room of state. 2 Extreme penalties. 

^ The yellow robe worn by victims at an atito-da-fe ; lit. "St. 
Benedict," from the cut of the Benedictine robe. 



32 Essays of Elia 

such poor runagates were friendless), or to his parish 
officer, who, to enhance the effect of the scene, had his 
station allotted to him on the outside of the hall gate. 
These solemn pageantries were not played off so often 

5 as to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had 
plenty of exercise and recreation after school hours ; and, 
for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier, than 
in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools 
were held in the same room ; and an imaginary line only 

lo divided their bounds. Their character was as different 
as that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyre- 
nees. The Rev. James Boyer was the Upper Master ; but 
the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion of the 
apartment, of which I had the good fortune to be a mem- 

15 ber. We hved a life as careless as birds. We talked and 
did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We 
carried an accidence,^ or a grammar, for form ; but, for 
any trouble it gave us, we might take two years in getting 
through the verbs deponent, and another two in forget- 

2o ting all that we had learned about them. There was now 
and then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had 
not learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough 
to disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. Field never 
used the rod ; and in truth he wielded the cane with no 

25 great goodwill — holding it "like a dancer." It looked in 
his hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of 
authority ; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of He 

1 A small book containing the rudiments (formerly called acci- 
dents) of grammar. 



Christ's Hospital 23 

was a good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own • 
peace, nor perhaps set any great consideration upon the 
value of juvenile time. He came among us, now and then, 
but often stayed away whole days from us ; and when he 
came, it made no difference to us — he had his private 5 
room to retire to, the short time he staid, to be out of 
the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. 
We had classics of our own, without being beholden to 
" insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current 
among us — Peter Wilkins — The Adventures of the 10 
Hon. Captain Robert Boyle — The Fortunate Blue- 
coat Boy — and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for 
mechanic or scientific operations ; making little sun-dials 
of paper ; or weaving those ingenious parentheses, called 
cat-c7'adles ; or making dry peas to dance upon the end of 15 
a tin pipe ; or studying the art military over that laudable 
game *' French and English," and a hundred other such 
devices to pass away the time — mixing the useful with the 
agreeable — as would have made the souls of Rousseau 
and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. 20 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines 
who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman, the 
scholar^ and the Christian; but, I know not how, the 
first ingredient is generally found to be the predominating 
dose in the composition. He was engaged in gay parties, 25 
or with his courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when he 
should have been attending upon us. He had for many 
years the classical charge of a hundred children, during 
the four or five first years of their education ; and his very 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 3 



34 Essays of Elia 

highest form^ seldom proceeded further than two or 
three of the introductory fables of Phsedrus. How things 
were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who 
was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, 
5 always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in 
a province not strictly his own. I have not been without 
my suspicions, that he was not altogether displeased at the 
contrast we presented to his end of the school. We were 
a sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would some- 

lo times, with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the 
Under Master, and then, with sardonic grin, observe to 
one of his upper boys, " how neat and fresh the twigs 
looked." While his pale students were battering their 
brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep 

15 as that enjoyed by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves 
at our ease in our Httle Goshen. We saw a little into the 
secrets of his discipHne, and the prospect did but the 
more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innoc- 
uous for us ; his storms came near, but never touched us ; 

20 contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were 
drenched, our fleece was dry.^ His boys turned out the 
better scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage in 
temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without some- 
thing of terror allaying their gratitude ; the remembrance 

25 of Field comes back with all the soothing images of indo- 
lence, and summer slumbers, and work Hke play, and inno- 

1 Bench. The English term equivalent to our "grade" or 
" class." 

^ Cowley. [C. L.] 



Christ's Hospital 35 

cent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a 
" playing holiday." 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of 
Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to under- 
stand a little of his system. We occasionally heard 5 
sounds of the Ululantes} and caught glances of Tartarus. 
B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was cramped to 
barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged 
him to those periodical flights) were grating as scrannel ^ 
pipes.^ — He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it 10 
must be at Flaccus's quibble about Rex^ — or at the tristis 
severitas in vultu^ or inspicere in patinas,^ of Terence — 
thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have 
had z;/j- '^ enough to move a Roman muscle. — He had two 

1 Howling ones. The idea is from Virgil, yEjteid, vi. 557. 

2 Thin, squeaking. Milton's term, see Lycidas, 124. 

^ In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. 
While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth 
a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more 
flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under 
the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the 
chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, 
but the town did not give it their sanction. — B.used to say of it, in 
a way of half-compliment, half- irony, that it was too classical for 
representation. [C. L.] 

* In the original, the quibble turns on the double meaning of 
rex as a private surname, and rex, a king. 

^ Puritanic rigour in his countenance, — used by Terence, And. 
5. 2. 16. to describe a hypocritical liar. 

6 To look into stew-pans, as in a mirror, — a counsel given to 
scullions. '^ Force, or point. 



^6 Essays of Elia 

wigs, both pedantic, but of differing omen. The one 
serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. 
The other, an old, discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon,^ 
denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the 
5 school, when he made his morning appearance in his 
passy OT passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. — 
J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double his 
knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal milk 
hardly dry upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you presume 

loto set your wits at me ?" — Nothing was more common 
than to see him make a headlong entry into the school- 
room, from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent 
eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's my life, Sirrah," 
(his favourite adjuration) " I have a great mind to whip 

15 you," — then, with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling 
back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse of some min- 
utes (during which all but the culprit had totally forgotten 
the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his im- 
perfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with 

20 the expletory yell — '^ and I^niia., too^ — In his gentler 
moods, when the rabidus fiiror'^ was assuaged, he had 
resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have 
heard, to himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the 
Debates,^ at the same time ; a paragraph, and a lash be- 

25 tween ; which in those times, when parliamentary oratory 
was most at a height and flourishing in these realms, was 

1 An old cant term for a wig; origin unknown. 

2 Rabid rage. Probably from Catullus 63. 38. 

3 That is, the reports of speeches in Parliament. 



Christ's Hospital 37 

not calculated to impress the patient with a veneration 
for the diffuser graces of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall 

ineffectual from his hand — when droll-squinting W ^ 

having been caught putting the inside of the master's 5 
desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not de- 
signed it, to justify himself, with great sim;~licity averred, 
that he did not know that the thing had been forewarned. 
This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the 
oral or declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy iq 
of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) 
that remission was unavoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. 
Coleridge, in his hterary life, has pronounced a more in- 
telligible and ample encomium on them. The author of 15 
the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him 
with the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot 
dismiss him better than with the pious ejaculation of Q? 
— when he heard that his old master was on his death- 
bed — " Poor J. B. ! — may all his faults be forgiven ; and 20 
may he be wafted to bhss by little cherub boys, all head 
and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary 
infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. — 
First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, 25 
kindest of boys and men, since co- grammar master (and 
inseparable companion) with Dr. T e.^ What an 

1 Not identifiable. ^ That is, Coleridge. 

3 Arthur William Trollope (1768-1827). 



38 Essays of Elia 

edifying spectacle did this brace of friends present to 
those who remembered the anti-sociaUties of their prede- 
cessors ! — You never met the one by chance in the street 
without a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by the 
5 almost immediate sub-appearance of the other. Gener- 
ally arm-in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for 
each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and 
when, in advanced age, one found it convenient to retire, 
the other was not long in discovering that it suited him 

10 to lay down the fasces ^ also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is 
rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which 
at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero De A??iicitia 
or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the young 
heart even then was burning to anticipate ! — Co-Grecian 

15 with S. was Th / who has since executed with ability 

various diplomatic functions at the Northern Courts. 

Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of 

speech, with raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Middleton 
followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a 

20 gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an ex- 
cellent critic ; and is author (besides the Country Spec- 
tator) of a treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. 
— M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the 
regni novitas ^ (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the bear- 

1 Here the birch rod. The word designates the bundle of rods, 
carried by the lictor before a Roman magistrate. 

2 Sir Edward Thornton (i 766-1852), a diplomatist. 

3 Novelty of dominion ; an allusion to his being theyfrj/ Bishop 
of Calcutta. The phrase from Virgil, /Eneid, i. 563. 



Christ's Hospital 39 

ing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or 
Hooker might not be exactly fitted to impress the minds 
of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for 
home institutions, and the church which those fathers 
watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, 5 
were mild, and unassuming. — Next to M. (if not senior 
to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, 
the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, 

studious Grecian. — Then followed poor S , ill-fated 

M ! ^ of these the Muse is silent. 10 

Finding some of Edward's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, Hke as thou wert in the day- 
spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before 
thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor 15 
Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have 
I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, 
entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro- 
portion between the speech and the garb of the young 
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet 20 
intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for 
even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- 
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or 
Pindar — while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed 
to the accents of the inspired charity-boy ! — Many were 25 
the " wit-combats," (to dally awhile with the words of old 

1 Of these the Key says, " Scott, died in Bedlam," and " Maunde, 
dismiss'd school." 



40 Essays of Elia 

Fuller,) between him and C. V. Le G ,^ " which two I 

behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man- 
of-war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far 
higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. 

5 C. V. L., with the EngHsh man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but 
lighter in saihng, could turn with all tides, tack about, 
and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his 
wit and invention." 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, 

lo Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, 
with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters 
shake, in thy cognition^ of some poignant jest of theirs; 
or the anticipation of some more material, and, peradven- 
ture, practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, 

IS with that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou 
wert the Nireus formosus^ of the school), in the days of 
thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of 
infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking 
pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly converted 

20 by thy angel look, exchanged the half-formed terrible 

"<^/ ,"^ for a gentler greeting — ^^ bless thy handsome 

face! " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 

1 Charles Valentine Le Grice (i 773-1 858). An anecdote is re- 
lated of him in the essay Grace before Meat, p. 136. 

^ I.e. appreciation. One of Lamb's quaintnesses in the use of 
words. 

3 Handsome Nireus; Homer, Iliad, ii. 673, Latinized. 

* Perhaps she started to say "blast. " 



Christ's Hospital 41 

friends of Elia — the junior Le G ^ and F ^ ; who 

impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too 
quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of enduring the 
slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats 
of learning — exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; 5 
perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Sala- 
manca : — Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; 

F dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm- 
hearted, with something of the old Roman height about 
him. ' . 10 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr ,^ the present master of 

Hertford, with Marmaduke T ,* mildest of Mission- 
aries — and both my good friends still — close the cata- 
logue of Grecians in my time. 

1 Samuel Le Grice, who became a soldier and died in the West 
Indies. 

2 Joseph Favell, afterwards Captain, and killed at Salamanca, 
in the Peninsula. In the essay on Poo^ Relations he figures as 
" W"; see p. 91. 

3 Frederick William Franklin, afterwards Master of one branch 
of the school. 

* Marmaduke Thompson, to whom Lamb dedicated Rosamtmd 
Gray. 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a 
long year. I have obHgations to Bridget, extending 
beyond the period of memory. We house together, old 
bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness ; ^ with 
5 such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, 
find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the 
mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my 
celibacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits — 
yet so, as "with a difference." We are generally in har- 

lo mony, with occasional bickerings — as it should be among 
near relations. Our sympathies are rather understood, 
than expressed ; and once, upon my dissembhng a tone 
in my voice more kind* than ordinary, my cousin burst into 
tears, and complained that I was altered. We are both 

IS great readers in different directions. While I am hang- 
ing over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old 
Burton, or one of his- strange contemporaries, she is 
abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our 
common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh 

20 supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little concern in 
the progress of events. She must have a story — well, ill, 
or indifferently told — so there be life stirring in it, and 

1 A play on the familiar phrase " double blessedness," used 
of marriage. 

42 



Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 43 

plenty of good or evil accidents.^ The fluctuations of for- 
tune in fiction — and almost in real life — have ceased to 
interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way 
humours and opinions — heads with some diverting twist in 
them — the oddities of authorship please me most. My 5 
cousin has a native disrehsh of anything that sounds odd 
or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her, that is quaint, 
irregular, or out of the road of common sympathy. She 
"holds Nature more clever." I can pardon her blind- 
ness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio Medici ; 10 
but she must apologize to me for certain disrespectful 
insinuations, which she has been pleased to throw out 
latterly, touching the intellectuals ^ of a dear favourite of 
mine, of the last century but one — the thrice noble, 
chaste, and virtuous, — but again somewhat fantastical, 15 
and original-brain 'd, generous Margaret Newcastle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I 
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine, 
free-thinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies 
and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, 20 
their opinions. That which was good and venerable to 
her, when a child, retains its authority over her mind still. 
She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; 
and I have observed the result of our disputes to be 25 
almost uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, 

1 An older use of the word, meaning nearly the same as incidents. 

2 A self-explaining quaintness of Lamb's, perhaps from an old- 
fashioned usage; we should now say good sense. 



44 Essays of Ella 

and circumstances, it turns out, that I was in the right, 
and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed 
upon moral points ; upon something proper to be done, or 
let alone ; whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of 
5 conviction, I set out with, I am sure always, in the long 
run, to be brought over to her way of thinking. 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a 
gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her 
faults. She hath^ an awkward trick (to say no worse of 

lo it) of reading in company : at which times she will answer 
yes or ?zo to a question, without fully understanding its 
purport — which is provoking, and derogatory in the high- 
est degree to the dignity of the putter of the said ques- 
tion. Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing 

IS trials of life, but will sometimes desert her upon trifling 
occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is a thing 
of moment, she can speak to it greatly ; but in matters 
which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been 
known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably. 

20 Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and 
she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which 
passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tum- 
bled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet 
of good old English reading, without much selection or 

1 It suited Lamb's taste for the older forms of style occasionally 
to use the older form of the verb. Doubtless he had in mind an 
effect to produce by it; in this and the next two paragraphs he 
seems to use it half-playfuUy, as helping to soften a little the gentle 
spirit of blame in which he speaks. 



Mackery End^ in Hertfordshire 45 

prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and whole- 
some pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be 
brought up exactly in this fashion. I know not whether 
their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it ; 
but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst come 5 
to the worst) most incomparable old maids. 

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; 
but in the teasing accidents,^ and minor perplexities, which 
do not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes 
maketh matters worse by an excess of participation. If 10 
she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleas- 
anter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your 
satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with, or 
upon a visit ; but best, when she goes a journey with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summers since, 15 
into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our 
less-known relations in that fine corn^ country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; or 
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in 
some old m ips of Hertfordshire ; a farm-house, — de- 2c 
lightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathamp- 
stead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit 
to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of 
Bridget ; who, as I have said, is older than myself by 
some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap 25 
the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share 
them in equal division. But that is impossible. The 

1 See p. 43, note i. 

2 We should say wheat country in America. 



46 Essays of Elia 

house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial 
yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His 
name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, 
married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are 
5 still flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields 
are ahuost extinct. More than forty years had elapsed 
since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of 
that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches 
also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery 

10 End — kindred or strange folk — we were afraid almost 
to conjecture, but determined some day to explore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park 
at Luton in our way from St. Albans, we arrived at the 
spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of 

IS the old farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced 
from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which 
I had not experienced for many a year. For though / 
had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there to- 
gether, and we had been talking about Mackery End all 

20 our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a 

phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a 

place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to that, 

which I had conjured up so many times instead of it ! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season was 

£5 in the " heart of June," and I could say with the poet. 

But thou, that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation ! 



Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 47 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she 
easily remembered her old acquaintance again — some al- 
tered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, in- 
deed, she was ready to disbeheve for joy ; but the scene 
soon reconfirmed itself in her affections — and she trav- s 
ersed every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood- 
house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house 
had stood (house and birds were ahke flown) — with a 
breathless impatience of recognition, which was more par- 
donable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. 10 
But Bridget in some things is behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house — and that 
was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insur- 
mountable ; for I am terribly shy in making myself known 
to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than 15 
scruple, winged my cousin in without me : but she soon re- 
turned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor 
for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the 
Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become 
mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Bru- 20 
tons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest 
young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in 
my mind, was better than they all — more comely. She was 
born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected 
in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed 25 
out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred, 
and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that 
prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a 
metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, 



48 Essays of Elia 

loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thor- 
oughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up to- 
gether ; were familiar, even to the calling each other by 
our Christian names. So Christians should call one an- 
5 other. To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the 
meeting of the two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace 
and dignity, an amphtude of form and stature, answering to 
her mind, in this farmer's wife, which would have shined^ 
in a palace — or so we thought it. We were made wel- 

10 come by husband and wife equally — we, and our friend 
that was with us — I had almost forgotten him — but B. 
F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure 
he shall read this on the far distant shores where the 
Kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or 

15 rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming; 
and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let 
me forget with what honest pride this hospitable cousin 
made us proceed to VVheathampstead, to introduce us (as 
some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Glad- 

20 mans, who did indeed know something more of us, at a 
time when she almost knew nothing. — With what corre- 
sponding kindness we were received by them also — how 
Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a 
thousand half-obliterated recollections of things and per- 

25 sons, to my utter astonishment, and her own — and to the 

astoundment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing 

that was not a cousin there, — old effaced images of more 

than half-forgotten names and circumstances still crowd- 

1 Lamb uses this obsolete form by preference. 



Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 49 

ing back upon her^ as words written in lemon come out 
upon exposure to a friendly warmth, — when I forget all 
this, then may my country cousins forget me ; and Bridget 
no more remember, that in the days of weakling infancy 
I was her tender charge — as I have been her care in 5 
foolish manhood since — in those pretty pastoral walks, 
long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire, 



ESSAYS OF ELIA- 



MY FIRST PLAY 

At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a 
portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced 
to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a 
printing-office. This old doorway, if you are young, 
5 Reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to 
old Drury — Garrick's Drury — all of it that is left. I never 
pass it without shaking some forty years from off my 
shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through 
it to see my first play . The afternoon had been wet, and 

10 the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) 
was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating 
heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the 
stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired 
cessation ! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the 

15 glee with which I ran to announce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent 
us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of 
Featherstone Building, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave 
person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his 

20 rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, 
the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy ; 
if John (which is quite as hkely) did not rather borrow 
somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was 
also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was to his 
50 



My First Play 51 

house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife 
on her elopement with hitn from a boarding-school at 
Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were 
present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the 
evening with his harmonious ^ charge. — From either of 5 
these connexions it may be inferred that my godfather 
could command an order for the then Drury Lane Theatre 
at pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those 
cheap billets, in Brinsley 's easy autograph, I have heard 
him say was the sole remuneration which he had received 10 
for many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and 
various avenues of that theatre — and he was content it 
should be so. The honour of Sheridan's familiarity — or 
supposed famiharity — was better to my godfather than 
money. 15 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandiloquent, 
yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters 
of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost 
constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an 
oilman's Hps !), which my better knowledge since has 20 
enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they 
should have been sounded vice versa — but in those young 
years they impressed me with more awe than they would 
now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his own 
pecuhar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or 25 
Anglicised, into something like verse verse. By an im- 
posing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, 

1 This word is Lamb's allusive way of intimating that the lady 
was a singer. 



52 Essays of Elia 

he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial 
honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow. 

He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his 
memory, both for my first orders^ (little wondrous tahs- 

5 mans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight, 
but opening to me more than Arabian paradises !) and 
moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came 
into possession of the only landed property which I could 
ever call my own — situate near the roadway village of 

lo pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I jour- 
neyed down to take possession, and planted foot on my 
own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended 
upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with 
larger paces over my allotment of three quarters of an 

15 acre, with its commodious mansion in the midst, with the 
feeling of an English freeholder that all betwixt sky and 
centre^ was my own. The estate has passed into more pru- 
dent hands, and nothing but an agrarian ^ can restore it. 
In those days were pit orders. Beshrew^ the uncom- 

20 fortable manager who abolished them ! — with one of these 
we went. I remember the waiting at the door — not 
that which is left — but between that and an inner door 
in shelter — O when shall I be such an expectant again ! — 

1 That is, theatre tickets ; the significance of which, to a child, 
is enlarged on in the parenthesis. 

'^ That is, centre of the earth. 

^ That is, one who favours, or who could bring about, a legal 
change in the tenure of land; the word is used of agitators for an 
equable distribution of property. 

* An old-fashioned, here meant to be half-playful, imprecation. 



My First Play S3 

with the cry of nonpareils/ an indispensable playhouse 
accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recol- 
lect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruit- 
eresses then was, " Chase some oranges, chase some 
numparels, chase a bill of the play ; " — chase pro chuse.^ 5 
But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that 
veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be 
disclosed — the breathless anticipations I endured ! I had 
seen something like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus 
and Cressida, in Rovve's Shakespeare — the tent scene lo 
with Diomede — and a sight of that plate can always 
bring back in a measure the feehng of that evening. — 
The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of 
quality, projected over the pit ; and the pilasters reaching 
down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know 15 
not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling — a 
homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-candy — yet, 
to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier quali- 
ties, it appeared a glorified candy ! — The orchestra lights 
at length arose, those "fair Auroras!" Once the bell 20 
sounded. It was to ring out yet once again — and, inca- 
pable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a 
sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the 
second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six 
years old — and the play was Artaxerxes ! 25 

1 Apparently some fruit or sweetmeat. 

^ An older spelling for choose, which Lamb retains partly be- 
cause it is old, partly perhaps because in this form it is less different 
from chase. 



54 Essays of Elia 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — 
the ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. 
It was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no 
proper interest in the action going on, for I understood 
5 not its import — but I heard the word Darius, and I was 
in the midst of Daniel.-^ All feeling was absorbed in 
vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, 
passed before me. I knew not players. I was in Persepo- 
lis for the time ; and the burning idol of their devotion 

lo almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe- struck, 
and beheved those significations to be something more 
than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a 
dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in 
dreams. — Harlequin's Invasion followed; where, I re- 

15 member, the transformation of the magistrates into rever- 
end beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic 
justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as 
sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of 

20 the Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, 
very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed 
by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, 
I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead- — but to my 
apprehension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote 

25 a piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Harle- 
quins — transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden scep- 

1 I.e. the Book of Daniel, in which Darius is a personage, and 
there are gorgeous scenes of the ancient Persian court. 

2 Vests, that is, vestments. So also (in singular) p. 55, 1. 2. 



My First Play ^^ 

tre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley 
come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white 
patchwork, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. So 
Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead. 

My third play followed in quick succession. It was 5 
The Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as 
grave as a judge ; for, I remember, the hysteric affectations 
of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic 
passion. Robinson Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, 
man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic 10 
as in the story. — The clownery and pantaloonery of these 
pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I be- 
lieve, I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I 
should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque 
Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout 15 
meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside 
of the old Round Church (my church) of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 178 1-2, when I was 
from six to seven years old. After the intervention of 
six or seven other years (for at school all play-going was 20 
inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That 
old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my 
fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with 
the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at 
sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that 25 
interval what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew 
nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I 
felt all, loved all, wondered all — 

Was nourished, I could not tell how — 



^6 Essays of Elia 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a 
rationalist. The same things were there materially; but 
the emblem, the reference, was gone ! — The green curtain 
was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the 
5 unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to present 
a "royal ghost," — but a certain quantity of green baize, 
which was to separate the audience for a given time from 
certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and 
pretend those parts. The lights — the orchestra hghts — 

10 came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the 
second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell — 
which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom 
of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered 
to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. 

15 1 thought the fault was in them ; but it was in myself, and 
the alteration which those many centuries — of six short 
twelvemonths — had wrought in me. — Perhaps it was for- 
tunate for me that the play of the evening was but an 
indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some 

20 unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered 
with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after 
enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. 
Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon 
yielded to the present attraction of the scene ; and the 

25 theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most de- 
hghtful of recreations. 



BARBARA S 

On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, 
I forget which it was, just as the clock had struck one, 
Barbara S , with her accustomed punctuahty as- 
cended the long rambling staircase, with awkward inter- 
posed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a s 
sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Treas- 
urer of (what few of our readers may remember) the old 
Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the custom, and 
remains so I believe to this day, for the players to receive 
their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not much 10 
that Barbara had to claim. 

This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; 
but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to 
her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her 
pious application of her small earnings, had given an air 15 
of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You 
would have taken her to have been at least five years 
older. 

Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, 
or where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But 20 
the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her 
above her age, had for some few months past entrusted to 
her the performance of whole parts. You may guess the 
self-consequence of the promoted Barbara. She had 
already drawn tears in young Arthur ; had rallied Richard 25 
with infantine petulance in the Duke of York ; and in her 
57 



58 Essays of Elia 

turn had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of 
Wales. She would have done the elder child in Morton's 
pathetic afterpiece to the hfe ; but as yet the Children 
in the Wood was not. 
5 Long after this Httle girl was grown an aged woman, I 
have seen some of these small parts, each making two or 
three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the 
then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more 
carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the 

10 establishment. But such as they were, blotted and 
scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them all ; and in 
the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful sight 
to behold them bound up in costhest Morocco, each sin- 
gle — each small part making a book — with fine clasps, 

15 gilt-splashed, &c. She had conscientiously kept them as 
they had been delivered to her ; not a blot had been 
effaced or tampered with. They were precious to her for 
their affecting remembrancings. They were her princi- 
pia,^ her rudiments ; the elementary atoms ; the htde 

20 steps by which she pressed forward to perfection. " What," 
she would say, " could Indian rubber, or a pumice-stone, 
have done for these darlings ?" 

I am in no hurry to begin my story — indeed I have 
little or none to tell — so I will just mention an observa- 

25 tion of hers connected with that interesting time. 

Not long before she died I had been discoursing with 

1 This term, which the next phrase defines, used to be applied to 
books containing the elements of a study, such as were put into 
the hands of young learners. 



Barbara S 59 

her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great 
tragic performer experiences during acting. I ventured 
to think, that though in the first instance such players 
must have possessed the feelings which they so powerfully 
called up in others, yet by frequent repetition those feel- 5 
ings must become deadened in great measure, and the 
performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than 
express a present one. She indignantly repelled the 
notion, that with a truly great tragedian the operation, by 
which such effects were produced upon an audience, ic 
could ever degrade itself into what was purely mechani- 
cal. With much deHcacy, avoiding to instance in her 
i-^^-experience, she told me, that so long ago as when she 
used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's 
Isabella, (I think it was) when that impressive actress has 15 
been bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, 
she has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which 
(to use her powerful expression) have perfectly scalded 
her back. 

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; but it 20 
was some great actress of that day. The name is indif- 
ferent ; but the fact of the scalding tears I most distinctly 
remember. 

I was always fond of the society of players, and am not 
sure that an impediment in my speech (which certainly 25 
kept me out of the pulpit) even more than certain per- 
sonal disqualifications, which are often got over in that 
profession, did not prevent me at one time of life from 
adopting it. I have had the honour (I must ever call it) 



6o Essays of Elia 

once to have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss 
Kelly. I have played at serious whist with Mr. Liston. 
I have chatted with ever good-humoured Mrs. Charles 
Kemble. I have conversed as friend to friend with her 
5 accomplished husband. I have been indulged with a 
classical conference with Macready ; and with a sight of 
the Player-picture gallery, at Mr. Matthews's, when the 
kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of the old 
actors (whom he loves so much) went over it with me, 

lo supplying to his capital collection, what alone the artist 
could not give them — voice; and their living motion. 
Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd and Parsons, and Badde- 
ley, have lived again for me at his bidding. Only Edwin 
he could not restore to me. I have supped with ; 

15 but I am growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say — at the desk of the then treasurer 
of the old Bath Theatre — not Diamond's — presented 

herself the little Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circum- 

23 stances. The father had practised, I believe, as an 
apothecary in the town. But his practice from causes 
which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way to 
arraign — or perhaps from that pure infehcity which ac- 
companies some people in their walk through life, and 

25 which it is impossible to lay at the door of imprudence 
— was now reduced to nothing. They were in fact in the 
very teeth of starvation, when the manager, who knew 
and respected them in better days, took the Httle Bar-- 
bara into his company. 



Barbara S 6i 

At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings 
were the sole support of the family, including two younger 
sisters. I must throw a veil over some mortifying circum- 
stances. Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance was 
the only chance of a Sunday's (generally their only) meal 5 
of meat. 

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's 
part, where in her theatrical character she was to sup ofif 
a roast fowl (O joy to Barbara !) some comic actor, who 
was for the night caterer for this dainty — in the mis- lo 
guided humour of his part, threw over the dish such a 
quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Barbara !) 
that when he crammed a portion of it into her mouth, she 
was obliged splutteringly to reject it ; and what with shame 
of her ill-acted part, and pain of real appetite at missing ^^. 
such a dainty, her little heart sobbed almost to breaking, 
till a flood of tears, which the well-fed spectators were 
totally unable to comprehend, mercifully reheved her. 

This was the Httle starved, meritorious maid, who stood 
before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's 20 
payment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theat- 
rical people besides herself say, of all men least calculated 
for a treasurer. He had no head for accounts, paid away 
at random, kept scarce any books, and summing up at 25 
the week's end, if he found himself a pound or so defi- 
cient, blessed himself that it was no worse. 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half-guinea. 
— By mistake he popped into her hand a — whole one. 



62 Essays of Elia 

Barbara tripped away. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake : 
God knows, Ravenscroft would never have discovered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those un- 
5 couth landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual 
weight of metal pressing her httle hand. 

Now mark the dilemma.^ 

She was by nature a good child. From her parents 
and those about her she had imbibed no contrary influ- 
lo ence. But then they had taught her nothing. Poor 
men's smoky cabins are not always porticoes of moral 
philosophy. This little maid had no instinct to evil, but 
then she might be said to have no fixed principle. She 
had heard honesty commended, but never dreamed of 
15 its application to herself. She thought of it as something 
which concerned grown-up people — men and women. 
She had never known temptation, or thought of prepar- 
ing resistance against it. 

Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, 
20 and explain to him his blunder. He was already so con- 
fused with age, besides a natural want of punctuahty, 
that she would have had some difficulty in making him 
understand it. She saw that in an instant. And then it 
was such a bit of money ! and then the image of a 
25 larger allowance of butcher's meat on their table next day 
came across her, till her little eyes glistened, and her 
mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft had always 

1 A perplexity, which, however, it is decided, produces a result 
in some way bad or undesirable. 



Barbara S 6^ 

been so good-natured, had stood her friend behind the 
scenes, and even recommended her promotion to some 
of her Httle parts. But again the old man was reputed 
to be worth a world of money. He was supposed to 
have fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then s 
came staring upon her the figures of her little stocking- 
less and shoeless sisters. And when she looked at her 
own neat white cotton stockings, which her situation at 
the theatre had made it indispensable for her mother to 
provide for her, with hard straining and pinching from lo 
the family stock, and thought how glad she should be to 
cover their poor feet with the same — and how then they 
could accompany her to rehearsals, which they had hith- 
erto been precluded from doing, by reason of their un- 
fashionable attire — in these thoughts she reached the is 
second landing-place — the second, I mean from the top 
— for there was still another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never-faihng friend did step in — for at that 
moment a strength not her own, I have heard her say, 20 
was revealed to her — a reason above reasoning — and 
without her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt 
her feet to move) she found herself transported back to 
the individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand in 
the. old hand of Ravenscroft, who in silence took back the 25 
refunded treasure, and who had been sitting (good man) 
insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her were anx- 
ious ages ; and from that moment a deep peace fell upon 
her heart, and she knew the quaHty of honesty. 



64 Essays of Elia 

A year or two's unrepining application to her profession 
brightened up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sis- 
ters, set the whole family upon their legs again, and re- 
leased her from the difficulty of discussing moral dogmas 
5 upon a landing-place. 

I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much 
short of mortification to her, to see the coolness with 
which the old man pocketed the difference, which had 
caused her such mortal throes. 

10 This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from 
the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,^ then sixty-seven 
years of age (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles 
upon this childish occasion I have sometimes ventured . 
to think her indebted for that power of rending the heart 

15 in the representation of conflicting emotions, for which in 
after years she was considered as little inferior (if at all 
so in the part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 

1 The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, 
by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford, 
She was Mrs. Crawford, and a third time a widow, when I knew her. 
[C. L.] 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou 
hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing 
thou art a lean annuitant Hke myself) — to the Flower 
Pot; to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or 
some other thy suburban retreat northerly, — didst thou 5 
never observe a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and 
stone edifice, to the left — where Threadneedle Street 
abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often 
admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and dis- 
closing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, 10 
with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out — a deso- 
lation something like Balclutha's.-^ 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy inter- 
ests. The throng of merchants was here — the quick 
pulse of gain — and here some forms of business are still 15 
kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are 
still to be seen stately porticoes ; imposing staircases ; 
offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces 
— deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling 
clerks ; the still more sacred interiors of court and com- 20 
mittee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door- 
keepers — directors seated in form on solemn days (to 
proclaim a dead dividend,) at long worm-eaten tables, 
that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather 

1 I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. — 
Ossian. [C. L.] 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 5 65 



66 Essays of Elia 

coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands long since 
dry ; — the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased 
governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the 
two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty; — huge 
5 charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated ; — 
dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — and soundings of 
the Bay of Panama ! — The long passages hung with buck- 
ets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance 
might defy any, short of the last, conflagration : — with vast 

lo ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of 
eight once lay, an '' unsunned heap," for Mammon to 
have solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since dissi- 
pated, of scattered into air at the blast of the breaking 
of that famous Bubble. — 

15 Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it was 
forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent relic ! 
What alterations may have been made in it since, I have 
had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for 
granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated 

20 the face of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this 
time stagnates upon it. The moths, that were then bat- 
tening upon its obsolete ledgers and daybooks, have 
rested from their depredations, but other light genera- 
tions have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their 

25 single and double entries. Layers of dust have accu- 
mulated (a superfoetation ^ of dirt ! ) upon the old layers, 

1 An instance of a usage, later much cultivated by such writers 
as Emerson and Holmes, of taking a scientific or technical term 
and applying it, like a figure, to an ordinary subject ; here, accord- 



The South-Sea House 67 

that seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious 
finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of 
book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hal- 
lowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries 
of that tremendous hoax, whose extent the petty pecula- 5 
tors of our day look back upon with the same expression 
of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of 
rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern con- 
spiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's^ super- 
human plot. 10 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and des- 
titution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial ! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and 
living commerce, — amid the fret and fever of specula- 
tion — with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India 15 
House about thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, 
with their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their 
poor neighbour out of business — to the idle and merely 
contemplative, — to such as me, old house ! there is a 
charm in thy quiet : — a cessation — a coolness from busi- 20 
ness — an indolence almost cloistral — which is delightful ! 
With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms 
and courts at eventide ! They spoke of the past : — the 
shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, 
would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and ac- 2-, 
countants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy 
great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks 

ing to Lamb's quaintness of sentiment, used somewhat whimsically 
or playfully. i Guy Fawkes. 



68 Essays of Elia 

of the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves 
— with their old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric 
interlacings — their sums in triple columniations/ set down 
with formal superfluity of ciphers — with pious sentences 
5 at the beginning, without which our religious ancestors 
never ventured to open a book of business, or bill of lad- 
ing — the costly vellum covers of some of them almost 
persuading us that we are got into some better library, — 
are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. I can look 

loupon these defunct dragons^ with complacency. Thy 
heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors 
had everything on a larger scale than we have hearts for) 
are as good as anything from Herculaneum. The pounce- 
boxes ^ of our days have gone retrograde. 

15 The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea 

House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very 

different from those in the pubUc offices that I have had to 

do with since. They partook of the genius of the place ! 

They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit 

20 of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had 
not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn 
of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before. 

1 It is thought that Lamb was the originator of this usage of the 
word. 

2 This name perhaps implies that the big books were things to 
be conquered, like the dragons that ancient knights fought with; 
but in this case no longer formidable foes. 

^ Pounce was a resinous powder used before blotters for drying 
ink, or when a word was erased, for sizing the spot again for writ- 
ing over. 



The South-Sea House 69 

Humorists/ for they were of all descriptions ; and, not 
having been brought together in early Hfe (which has a 
tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies 
to each other), but, for the most part, placed in this 
house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into 5 
it their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may 
so speak, as into a common stock. Hence they formed 
a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. 
Domestic retainers in a great house, kept more for 
show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat — and 10 
not a few among them had arrived at considerable profi- 
ciency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro- 
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion 
of his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a 15 
worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to 
the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which 
I remember to have seen in. caricatures of what were 
termed, in my young days, Maccaronies? He was the 
last of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat 20 
over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him, mak- 
ing up his cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as 
if he feared every one about him was a defaulter ; in his 
hypochondry ready to imagine himself one ; haunted, at 
least, with the idea of the possibility of his becoming 25 
one : his tristful visage clearing up a little over his roast 

1 That is, men who indulged their oddities or eccentricities; not 
as we use the word, funny men. 

^ The former name for dandies or dudes. 



yo Essays of Elia 

neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where his picture still 
hangs, taken a little before his death by desire of the 
master of the coffee-house, which he had frequented for 
the last five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the 
5 meridian of its animation till evening brought on the 
hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of his 
well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock 
announcing six, was a topic of never-faihng mirth in the 
families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his 

lo presence. Then was hi?, forte, his glorified hour ! How 
would he chirp, and expand, over a muffin ! How would 
he dilate into secret history ! His countryman. Pennant 
himself, in particular, co.uld not be more eloquent than 
he in relation to old and new London — the site of old 

15 theatres, churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosa- 
mond's pond stood — the Mulberry Gardens — and the , 
Conduit in Cheap — with many a pleasant anecdote, de- 
rived from paternal tradition, of those grotesque figures 
which Hogarth has immortalized in his picture oi Noon, — 

20 the worthy descendants of those heroic confessors, who, 
flying to this country, from the wrath of Louis the Four- 
teenth and his dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure 
religion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog Lane, and 
the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 

25 Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had 
the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken 
him for one, had you met him in one of the passages 
leading to Westminster Hall. By stoop, I mean that 
gentle bending of the body forwards, which, in great 



The South-Sea House 71 

men, must be supposed to be the effect of an habitual 
condescendmg attention to the appHcations of their in- 
feriors. While he held you in converse, you felt strained 
to the height in the colloquy. The conference over, you 
were at leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance 5 
of the pretensions which had just awed you. His intel- 
lect was of the shallowest order. It did not reach to a 
saw or a proverb. His mind was in its original state of 
white paper. A sucking babe might have posed him. 
What was it then? Was he rich? Alas, no! Thomas 10 
Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked out- 
wardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all 
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it 
was evident she had not sinned in over-pampering; but 
in its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by 15 
some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly 
understood, — much less can explain with any heraldic cer- 
tainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious, but un- 
fortunate house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of 
Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — the sentiment — 20 
the bright solitary star of your lives, — ye mild and happy 
pair, — which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in 
the obscurity of your station ! This was to you instead 
of riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering attain- 
ments : and it was worth them all together. You in- 25 
suited none with it ; but, while you wore it as a piece of 
defensive armour only, no insult likewise could reach you 
through it. Decus et solamen} 

1 Glory and consolation. See Virgil, Aineid, x. 859. 



72 Essays of Elia 

Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John 
Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good 
truth cared one fig about the matter. He " thought an 
accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself 

5 the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not with- 
out his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He 
sang, certainly, with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. 
He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abominably. 
His fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle Street, 

lo which, without anything very substantial appended to 
them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions of him- 
self that lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier 
of them now)^ resounded fortnightly to the notes of a 
concert of " sweet breasts," as our ancestors would have 

15 called them, culled from club rooms and orchestras — 
chorus singers — first and second violoncellos — double 
basses — and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton, and 
drank his punch, and praised his ear. He sat like Lord 
Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite an- 

20 other sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that were purely 
ornamental, were banished. You could not speak of any- 
thing romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded. 

^ I have since been informed that the present tenant of them is a 
Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some 
choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which I 
mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same 
time to refresh my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr. 
Lamb has the character of a right courteous and communicative 
collector. [Foot-note appended instead of parenthesis in London 
Magazine. '\ 



The South-Sea House 73 

A newspaper was thought too refined and abstracted. 
The whole duty of man consisted in writing off dividend 
warrants. The striking of the annual balance in the 
company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the bal- 
ance of last year in the sum of 25/. is. 6d.) occupied s 
his days and nights for a month previous. Not that 
Tipp was bhnd to the deadness of things (as they called 
them in the city) in his beloved house, or did not sigh 
for a return of the old stirring days when South- Sea 
hopes were young — (he was indeed equal to the wielding 10 
of any the most intricate accounts of the most flourish- 
ing company in these or those days) : — but to a genuine 
accountant the difference of proceeds is as nothing. 
The fractional farthing is as dear to his heart as the 
thousands which stand before it. He is the true actor, 15 
who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant, must act 
it with hke intensity. With Tipp form was everything. 
His life was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a 
ruler. His pen was not less erring than his heart. He 
made the best executor in the world : he was plagued 20 
with incessant executorships accordingly, which excited 
his spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He 
would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, whose 
rights he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp of 
the dying hand, that commended their interests to his 25 
protection. With all this there was about him a sort of 
timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a worse name) 
— a something which, in reverence to the dead, we will 
place, if you please, a litUe on this side of the heroic. 



74 Essays of Elia 

Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John Tipp 
with a sufficient measure of the principle of self-preser- 
vation. There is a cowardice which we do not despise, 
because it has nothing base or treacherous in its ele- 
5 ments ; it betrays itself, not you : it is mere tempera- 
ment ; the absence of the romantic and the enterprising; 
it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, 
" greatly find quarrel in a straw," when some supposed 
honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a 

lo stage-coach in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a bal- 
cony ; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or looked 
down a precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon a water 
party; or would wiUingly let you go if he could have 
helped it : neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, 

15 or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle. 

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in 

whom common qualities become uncommon ? Can I forget 

thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of letters, the 

author, o{ the South-Sea House? who never enteredst thy 

20 office in a morning, or quittedst it in midday — (what 
didst thoti- in an office?) — without some quirk that 
left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, 
or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which I had the 
good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three 

25 days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as 
alive. Thy wit is a Httle gone by in these fastidious days 
— thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds" of the 
time : — but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and 
in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shelburne, and Rock- 



The South-Sea House 75 

ingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the 
war which ended in the tearing from Great Britain her re- 
belhous colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Saw- 
bridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, 
— and such small politics. — ! 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreper- 
ous, was fine ratthng, rattle-headed Plumer. He was 
descended, — not in a right line. Reader, (for his lineal 
pretensions, like his personal, favoured a little of the sin- 
ister bend) from the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradi- i 
tion gave him out ; and certain family features not a little 
sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer (his 
reputed author) had been a rake in his days, and visited 
much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle, 
bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who has i 
represented the county in so many successive parliaments, 
and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished 
in George the Second's days, and was the same who was 
summoned before the House of Commons about a business 
of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may 2 
read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off clev- 
erly in that business. It is certain our Plumer did noth- 
ing to discountenance the rumour. He rather seemed 
pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. 
But besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an engag- 2 
ing fellow, and sang gloriously. — 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer, as thou sangest, mild, child- 
like, pastoral M ;^ a flute's breathing less divinely 

1 "Maynard — hang'd himst-lf," Lamb's Key. 



76 Essays of Elia 

whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones 
worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by 
Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter 
wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy 
5 sire was old surly M , the unapproachable churchwar- 
den of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when he 
begat thee, hke spring, gentle offspring of blustering win- 
ter : — only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have 
been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. — 

10 Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, 
but they must be mine in private : ■ — already I have fooled 
the reader to the top of his bent ; — else could I omit that 
strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the ques- 
tion, and bought litigations ? — and still stranger, inimitable, 

15 solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have 
deduced the law of gravitation.^ How profoundly would 
he nib a pen — with what deliberation would he wet a 
wafer ! — 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are ratthng fast 

20 over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn 
mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this 
while — peradventure the very names, which I have sum- 
moned up before thee^ are fantastic — insubstantial — 

25 hke Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece : — 
Be satisfied that something answering to them has had 
a being. Their importance is from the past. 

1 A whimsical change in the meaning of the word from its impli- 
cation in gravity. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this ar- 
ticle — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye 
(which, while it reads, seems as though it read not,) never 
fails to consult the quis sculpsit^ in the corner, before he 
pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet s 
— methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia ? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some 
half- forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an 
old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubt- 
less you have already set me down in your mind as one of lo 
the self-same college — a votary of the desk — a notched 
and cropped scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, 
as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. 

Well, I do agnize^ something of the sort. I confess 
that it is my humour, my fancy — in the fore-part of the 15 
day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some 
relaxation — (and none better than such as at first sight 
seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while 
away some good hours of my time in the contemplation 
of indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or 20 
otherwise. In the first place . . . and then it sends you 

1 Who engraved ; referring to the label put upon works of art 
to name the artist. 

2 Acknowledge. A Shakespearean word, somewhat quaint and 
obsolete, of which Lamb was fond. 

77 



78 Essays of Elia 

home with such increased appetite to your books . . . 
not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers 
of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and natu- 
rally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so 
5 that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some- 
sort, the settings up of an author. The enfranchised 
quill, that has plodded all the morning among the cart- 
rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its 
ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight disser- 

10 tation. — It feels its promotion. ... So that you see, 
upon the whole, the literary dignity of B/ia is very little, 
if at all, compromised in the condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities 
incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought 

15 blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be 
able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have 
leave, in the fullness of my soul, to regret the abolition, 
and doing-avvay-with altogether, of those consolatory inter- 
stices, and sprinkhngs of freedom, through the four seasons, 

20 — the 7'ed-Ietter days, now become, to all intents and pur- 
poses, dead letter days* There was Paul, and Stephen, and 
Barnabas — ■ 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times 

— -we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back 
25 as I was at school at Christ's. I remember t.heir effigies, 
by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book. There 
hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy^ in the 
troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by 
1 Old-fashioned way of writing Bartholomew. 



Oxford in the Vacation 79 

Spagnoletti. — I honoured them all, and could almost have 
wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to 
keep holy memories sacred : — only methought I a little 
grudged at the coahtion of the better Jude with Simon — 
clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make up 5 
one poor gaudy-day between them — as an economy un- 
worthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's 
life — • " far off their coming shone." — I was as good as an 
almanac m those days. I could have told you such a 10 
saint's day falls out next week, or the week after. Per- 
adventure the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, 
would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am 
I little better than one of the profane. Let me not be 
thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who 15 
have judged the further observation of these holy tides to 
be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such 
long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops 
had, in decency, been first sounded — but I am wading out 
of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of 20 
civil and ecclesiastical authority — I am plain Elia — no 
Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — though at present in the 
thick of their books, here in the heart of learning, under 
the shadow of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To 25 
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young 
years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is 
so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other 
of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of 



8o Essays of Elia 

the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my 
walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or 
standing I please. I seem admitted ad eH?idej?i} I 
fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel- 

5 bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humil- 
ity I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock 
vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver 
moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not 
think I am much unhke that respectable character. I 

lo have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spec- 
tacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistak- 
ing me for something of the sort. I go about in black, 
which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church rev- 
erend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing 

IS short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the 
tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The halls 
deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in un- 
perceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or 

20 royal Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose 
portrait seems to smile upon their overlooked beadsman,^ 
and to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in 
by the way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of an- 
tique hospitahty : the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen 

1 To the same [degree] ; a term used of the admission of a man 
from one university to corresponding standing in another without 
examination. 

^ A man employed to pray for another, dropping a bead with each 
prayer. 



Oxford ill the Vacation 8i 

fire-places, cordial recesses ; ovens whose first pies were 
baked four centuries ago ; and spits which have cooked for 
Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister^ among the dishes 
but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the 
Cook goes forth a Manciple.- 5 

Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that, 
being nothing, art everything ! When thou wert, thou 
wert not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a 
remoter antiquity, as thou called st it, to look back to with 
blind veneration ; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, lo 
modern ! What mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what 
half Januses ^ are we, that cannot look forward with the 
same idolatry with which we forever revert ! The mighty 
future is as nothing, being everything ! the past is every- 
thing, being nothing ! 15 

What were thy dark ages ? Surely the sun rose as brightly 
then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. 
Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without 
an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had 
dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered 20 
to and fro groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most 
arride^ and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering 
learning, thy shelves — 

What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as 25 

1 Note that this word has its primitive meaning of servant. 

2 Chief of a college commissariat. Lamb uses the word, perhaps, 
because one of Chaucer's characters, just referred to, was a Manciple. 

^Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Broivne. \_C. Z.] 
* To gratify laughingly ; one of Lamb's favourite old words. 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 6 



82 Essays of Elia 

though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed 
their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in 
some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to han- 
dle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could 
5 as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, 
walking amid their foliage ; and the odour of their old 
moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of 
those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. 
Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of 

lo MSS. Those vaj-ice lectiones} so tempting to the more 
erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I 
am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three wit- 
nesses might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave 
these curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — whom, by the 

15 way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, 
rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at 
Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. 
He stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. 
I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his 

20 place. He might have mustered for a tall Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. 
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I ap- 
prehend, is consumed in journeys between them and 
Clifford's Inn — where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he 

25 has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incon- 
gruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, 
promoters, vermin of the law, among whom he sits, " in 
calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the law pierce 
1 Different readings. 



Oxford in the Vacation 83 

him not — the winds of litigation blow over his humble 
chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he 
passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches him — none 
thinks of offering violence or injustice to him — you would 
as soon " strike an abstract idea." 5 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of 
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter 
connected with the two Universities ; and has lately lit 

upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by 

which he hopes to settle some disputed points — particu- 10 
larly that long controversy between them as to priority of 
foundation. The ardour with which he engages in these 
liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all the en- 
couragement it deserved, either here, or at C . Your 

caputs,^ and heads of colleges, care less than anybody else 15 
about these questions. — Contented to suck the milky 
fountains of their Alma Maters, without inquiring into the 
venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such 
curiosities to be impertinent — unreverend. They have 
their good glebe lands in manu^ and care not much to 20 
rake into the title-deeds. I gather at least so much from 
other sources, for D. is not a man to complain. 

D. started hke an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted 
him. y^/r/fS";-/^ it was not very probable that we should 
have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same, 25 
had I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in 

1 Heads. An abbreviation of the term caput senatus, " head of 
the senate"; an English University official. 

^ In hand. ^ From [what is] before = judging beforehand. 



84 Essays of Elia 

Clifford's Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a pro- 
voking short-sightedness (the effect of late studies and 
watchings at the midnight oil) D. is the most absent of 
men. He made a call the other morning at our friend 
sM.'s in Bedford Square; and, finding nobody at home, 
was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen and ink, 
with great exactitude of purpose he enters me ^ his name 
in the book — which ordinarily lies about in such places, to 
record the failures of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — 

10 and takes his leave with many ceremonies, and professions 
of regret. Some two or three hours after, his walking des- 
tinies returned him into the same neighbourhood again, 
and again the quiet image of the fireside circle at J/.'s — 
Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, with pretty 

15^. S. at her side — striking irresistibly on his fancy, he 
makes another call (forgetting that they were " certainly 
not to return from the country before that day week ") and 
disappointed a second time, inquires for pen and paper as 
before : again the book is brought, and in the line just 

20 above that in which he is about to print his second name 
(his re-script) — his first name (scarce dry) looks out upon 
him like another Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly en- 
counter his own duplicate ! — The effect may be conceived. 
D. made many a good resolution against any such lapses 

25 in future. I hope he will not keep them too rigorously. 
For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is some- 
times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the 
Lord. At the very time when, personally, encountering 
1 A redundant pronoun imitative of old usage. 



Oxford in the Vacation 85 

thee, he passes on with no recognition — or, being stopped, 
starts Hke a thing surprised — at that moment, Reader, he 
is on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co-sphered with 
Plato — or, with Harrington, framing " immortal common- 
wealths" — devising some plan of amelioration to thy 5 
country, or thy species — peradventure meditating some 
individual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, ■ 
the returning consciousness of which made him to start 
so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence. 

D. commenced hfe, after a course of hard study in the 10 
" House of pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic 

schoolmaster at , at a salary of eight pounds per 

annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend, he 
never received above half in all the laborious years he 
served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when 15 
poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes 
compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint 

at arrears. Dr. would take no immediate notice, but, 

after supper, when the school was called together to even- 
song, he would never fail to introduce some instructive 20 
homily againSt riches, and the corruption of the heart oc- 
casioned through the desire of them — ending with "Lord, 
keep thy servants, above all things from the heinous sin 
of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us therewithal 
be content. Give me Agar's wish," — and the like; — 25 
which to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of 
Christian prudence and simplicity, — but to poor D. was a 
receipt in full for that quarter's demands at least. 

And D. has been under- working for himself ever since ; 



86 Essays of Elia 

— drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, — 
wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the 
classics, and in those unostentatious but solid services to 
learning, which commonly fall to the lot of laborious 
5 scholars, who have not the art to sell themselves to the 
best advantage. He has published poems, which do not 
• sell, because their character is inobtrusive hke his own, — 
and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient 
literature, to know what the popular mark in poetry is, 

lo even if he could have hit it. And, therefore, his verses 
are properly, what he terms them, crotchets ; voluntaries; 
odes to Liberty, and Spring ; effusions ; little tributes, 
and offerings, left behind him, upon tables and window- 
seats, at parting from friends' houses ; and from all the inns 

15 of hospitality, where he has been courteously (or but toler- 
ably) received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of kind- 
ness halt a little behind the strong lines, in fashion in this 
excitement-craving age, his prose is the best of the sort in the 
world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own healthy 

20 natural mind, and cheerful innocent tone of conversation. 
D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such 
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is 
out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrow- 
gate. The Cam and the Isis are to him " better than all 

25 the waters of Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, 
and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable 
Mountains ; and when he goes about with you to show 
you the halls and colleges, you think you have with you 
the Interpreter at the House Beautiful. 



POOR RELATIONS 

A Poor Relation — is the most irrelevant thing in na- 
ture, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an odious 
approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a preposterous 
shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, — 
an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpetually recurring 5 
mortification, — a drain on your purse, — a more intoler- 
able dun upon your pride, — • a drawback upon success, — 
a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your blood, — a blot on 
your scutcheon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's head 
at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your 10 
gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, — a 
frog in your chamber, — a fly in your ointment, — a mote 
in your eye, — a triumph to your enemy, an apology to 
your friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in 
harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 15 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you 

" That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and 

respect ; that demands, and, at the same time, seems to 
despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling, and — 
embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, 20 
and — draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about 
dinner-time — when the table is full. He offereth to go 
away, seeing you have company — but is induced to stay. 
He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are ac- 
87 



88 Essays of Elia 

commodated at a side-table. He never cometh .upon 
open days, when your wife says with some complacency, 

" My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." He 

remembereth birthdays — and professeth he is fortunate to 
5 have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the 
turbot being small — yet suffereth himself to be importuned 
into a slice against his first resolution. He sticketh by the 
port — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder 
glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a 

lo puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequi- 
ous, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think " they 
have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his 
condition ; and the most part take him to be — a tide- 
waiter.^ He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply 

IS that his other is the same with your own. He is too famihar 
by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half 
the familiarity he might pass for a casual dependent ; with 
more boldness he would be in no danger of being taken 
for what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh 

20 on him more state than befits a cHent. He is a worse 
guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up 
no rent — yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that 
your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one 
at the whist table ; refuseth on the score of poverty, and 

25 — resents being left out. When the company break up, 
he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the servant go. 
He recollects your grandfather ; and will thrust in some 
mean, and quite unimportant anecdote of — the family. 
1 A custom-house officer who boards incoming vessels. 



Poor Relations 89 

He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as " he is 
blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to 
institute what he calleth — favourable comparisons. With a 
reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price 
of your furniture ; and insults you with a special commen- 5 
dation of your window- curtains. He is of opinion that the 
urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there was some- 
thing more comfortable about the old tea-kettle — which 
you must remember. He dare say you must find a great 
convenience in having a carriage of your own, and ap- 10 
pealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have 
had your arms done on vellum yet ; and did not know 
till lately, that such and such had been the crest of the 
family. His memory is unseasonable ; his compliments 
perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and 15 
when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner, 
as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nui- 
sances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a 
female Poor Relation. You may do something with the 20 
other ; you may pass him off tolerably well ; but your indi- 
gent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old humorist," ^ 
you may say, " and affects to go threadbare. His circum- 
stances are better than folks would take them to be. You 
are fond of having a Character at your table, and truly he is 25 
one." But in the indications of female poverty there can be 
no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. 
The truth must out without shuffling. "She is plainly 
1 See note i,p. 69. 



90 Essays of Elia 

related to the L s ; or what does she at their house ? " 

She is, in all probabihty, your wife's cousin. Nine times out 
of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something 
between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former 

5 evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, 
and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may 
require to be repressed sometimes — aliquando sufflami- 
nandus erat^ — but there is no raising her. You send her 
soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped — after the 

10 gentlemen. Mr. requests the honour of taking wine 

with her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and 
chooses the former — because he does. She calls the ser- 
vant Sir; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. 
The housekeeper patronizes her. The children's governess 

15 takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the 
piano for a harpsichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance 
of the disadvantages, to which this chimerical notion of 
affijiity constituting a clai7n to acquaintance ^ may subject 

20 the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all 
that is betwixt him and a lady of great estate. His stars 
are perpetually crossed by the mahgnant maternity of an 
old woman, who persists in calHng him "her son Dick." 
But she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his 

25 indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant surface, 
under which it had been her seeming business and pleasure 
all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's 

1 " It was necessary to put the drag on sometimes ;" a quotation 
from Seneca, adapted. 



Poor Relations 91 

temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting 

Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W ^ was of my 

own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of 
promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride ; but 
its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of that sort which s 
hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a dis- 
tance ; it only sought to ward off derogation from itself. 
It was the principle of self-respect carried as far as it could 
go, without infringing upon that respect, which he would 
have every one else equally maintain for himself. He 10 
would have you to think alike with him on this topic. 
Many a quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather 
older boys, and our tallness made us more obnoxious to 
observation in the blue clothes, because I would not thread 
ths alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude 15 
notice, when we have been out together on a hoHday in the 

streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. W 

went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity 
and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of 
a humble introduction, wrought in him a passionate devo- 20 
tion to the place, with a profound aversion from the society. 
The servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to 
him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in 
a garb, under which Latimer must have walked erect ; and 
in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in a 25 
vein of no discommendable vanity. In the depth of college 
shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk 
from observation. He found shelter among books, which 
1 Lamb identifies W — — with Favell; see p. 41. 



92 Essays of Elia 

insult not ; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's 
finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for 
looking out beyond his domains. The healing influence of 
studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and to abstract. 
5 He was almost a healthy man ; when the waywardness of his 
fate broke out against him with a second and worse malig- 
nity. The father of W had hitherto exercised the 

humble profession of house-painter at N , near Oxford. 

A supposed interest with some of the heads of the colleges 

lo had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with 
the hope of being employed upon some public works which 
were talked of From that moment I read in the counte- 
nance of the young man, the determination which at length 
tore him from academical pursuits forever. To a person 

15 unacquainted with our Universities, the distance between 
the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called — the 
trading part of the latter especially — is carried to an excess 
that would appear harsh and incredible. The tempera- 
ment of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of 

20 his own. Old W was a Httle, busy, cringing trades- 
man, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing 
and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the sem- 
blance of a gown — insensible to the winks and opener 
remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber- fellow, 

25 or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and 
gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. 

W must change the air of Oxford or be suffocated. 

He chose the former; and let the sturdy morahst, who 
strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, 



Poor Relations 93 

censure the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the struggle. 

I stood with W , the last afternoon I ever saw him, 

under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine 

lane leading from the High Street to the back of 

College, where W kept his rooms. He seemed 5 

thoughtful, and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him 
— finding him in a better mood — upon a represen- 
tation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old man, whose 
affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused to be set up 
in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, 10 
either as a token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his 

saint. W looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, 

''knew his mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his 
father's table the next morning, announced that he had 
accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for 15 
Portugal. He was among the first who perished before 
the walls of St. Sebastian. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with 
treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital 
so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor relationship 20 
is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic 
associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct 
without blending. The earliest impressions which I re- 
ceived on this matter, are certainly not attended with any- 
thing painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At 25 
my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be found, 
every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, 
clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. 
His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words 



94 Essays of Elia 

few or none j and I was not to make a noise in his pres- 
ence. I had httle inclination to have done so — for my 
cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbow- 
chair was appropriated to him, which was in no case to 
5 be violated. A pecuHar sort of sweet pudding, which ap- 
peared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his 
coming. I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. 
All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had 
been school-fellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that he 

locame from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place 
where all the money was coined — and I thought he was 
the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower 
twined themselves about his presence. He seemed above 
human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy 

15 grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom 
I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of 
mourning ; a captive — a stately being, let out of the 
Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the 
temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual gen- 

20 eral respect which we all in common manifested towards 
him, would venture now and then to stand up against him 
in some argument, touching their youthful days. The 
houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most 
of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and 

25 in the valley. This marked distinction formed an ob- 
vious division between the boys who lived above (how- 
ever brought together in a common school) and the boys 
whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a sufficient 
cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. 



Poor Relations 95 

My father had been a leading Mountaineer ; and would 
still maintain the general superiority, in skill and hardi- 
hood, of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below 
Boys (so were they called), of which party his contemporary 
had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes 5 
on this topic — the only one upon which the old gentle- 
man was ever brought out — and bad blood bred; even 
sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) * 
of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to in- 
sist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the 10 
conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of the 
old Minster ; in the general preference of which, before 
all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, 
and the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating level, 
and lay down their less important differences. Once 15 
only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I re- 
membered with anguish the thought that came over me : 
" Perhaps he will never come here again." He had been 
pressed to take another plate of the viand, which I have 
already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of 20 
his visits. He had refused, with a resistance amounting to 
rigour — when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had 
something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, 
that she would sometimes press civility out of season — 
uttered the following memorable application — " Do take 25 
another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding 
every day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time 
— but he took occasion in the course of the evening, 
when some argument had intervened between them, to 



g6 Essays of Elia 

utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and 
which chills me now as I write it — " Woman, you are 
superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive long, after 
the digesting of this affront ; but he survived long enough 

5 to assure me that peace was actually restored ! and, if 
I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly 
substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the 
offence. He died at the Mint (Anno T781), where he 
had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable indepen- 

10 dence ; and with five pounds, fourteen shilhngs, and a 
penny, which were found in his escritoire after his decease, 
left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury 
him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for 
a sixpence. This was — a Poor Relation. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathiz- 
eth with all things, I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy 
in anything. Those national repugnancies do not touch me, nor do 
I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — 
Religio Medici. i^ 

That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon 
the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional 
and conjectural essences ; in whose categories of Being 
the possible took the upper hand of the actual ; should 
have overlooked the impertinent individualities of such lo 
poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. 
It is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of ani- 
mals he should have condescended to distinguish that 
species at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to 
the scene of my activities, — 15 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, na- 
tional or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look 
with no indifferent eye upon things or persons. What- 
ever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when 20 
once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I 
am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices — made up 
of likings and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, 
apathies, antipathies.^ In a certain sense, I hope it may 

iNote hovi^, in choosing these words derived from the same Greek 
original, Lamb runs the scale from liking, through indifference, to 
dislike. 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 7 97 



98 Essays of Elia 

be said of me that I am a lover of my species. I can 
feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all 
equally. The more purely English word that expresses 
sympathy will better explain my meaning. I can be a 
5 friend to a worthy man, who upon another account can- 
not be my mate ox fellow. I cannot like all people alike.^ 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and 
am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. 
They cannot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of 

I I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of im- 
perfect sy?npathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no 
direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated 
so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere can- 
not hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can be- 
lieve the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another 
before in their lives) and instantly fighting. 

We by proof find there should be 

'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil. 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Hey wood's " Hierarchic of Angels," and he 
subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted 
to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack 
could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy 
which he had taken to the first sight of the King. 

The cause which to that act compell'd him 

Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. [C. L,] 



Imperfect Sympathies 99 

that nation who attempted to do it. There is something 
more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. 
We know one another at first sight. There is an order 
of imperfect intellects (under which mine must be con- 
tent to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti- 5 
Caledonian.^ The owners of the sort of faculties I allude 
to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in 
their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their 
intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole 10 
pieces in it. They are content with fragments and 
scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no full front to 
them — a feature or side face at the most. Hints and 
glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the ut- 
most they pretend to. They beat up a little game per- 15 
adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust 
constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them 
is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting : waxing, 
and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. 
They will throw out a random word in or out of season, 20 
and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They 
cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — 
but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some 
abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, 
but e'en^ bring it to market in the green ear. They de- 25 
light to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, 
without waiting for their full development. They are no 

1 Caledonia is the poetic name of Scotland. 

2 Lamb uses this poetic abbreviation as a kind of archaism. 



loo Essays of Elia 

systematizers, and would bat err more by attempting it. 
Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The 
brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is con- 
stituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born 

S in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in 
their growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not 
rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You 
never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or 
suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect 

lo order and completeness. He brings his total wealth into 
company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always 
about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering some- 
thing in your presence, to share it with you, before he 
quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You can- 

is not cry halves to anything that he finds. He does not 
find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehension 
of a thing. His understanding is always at its meridian 
— you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. — He 
has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, 

20 misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial 
illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no 
place in his brain, or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety 
never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no 
doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Between 

25 the affirmative and the negative there is no border-land 
with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines 
of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. 
He always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions 
with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctu- 



Imperfect Sympathies loi 

ates. His morality never abates. He cannot compro- 
mise, or understand middle actions. There can be but a 
right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His 
affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must 
speak upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor 5 
like a suspected person in an enemy's country. "A 
healthy book ! " — said one of his countrymen to me, who 
had ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle, — 
" did I catch rightly what you said ? I have heard of a 
man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do 10 
not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a 
book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expres- 
sions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon 
your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. 
Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of 15 
a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was 
showing off to Mr. . After he had examined it mi- 
nutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty (a 
foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when he very 
gravely assured me, that " he had considerable respect 20 
for my character and talents " (so he was pleased to say), 
" but had not given himself much thought about the degree 
of my personal pretensions." The misconception stag- 
gered me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. — 
Persons of this nation are particularly fond of affirming a 25 
truth — which nobody doubts. They do not so properly 
affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed appear to have 
such a love of truth (as if, like^ virtue, it were valuable for 
itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether 



I02 Essays of Elia 

the proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, 
or such as is impossible become a subject of disputa- 
tion. I was present not long since at a party of North 
Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and hap- 

5 pened to drop a silly expression (in my South British 
way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son 
— when four of them started up at once to inform me, 
that "that was impossible, because he was dead." An 
impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could 

lo conceive. Swift has hit off this part of theii character, 
namely their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an 
illiberality that necessarily confines the passage to the 
margin.^ The tediousness of these people is certainly 
provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one another ! — In 

15 my early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry 
of Burns. I have sometimes foohshly hoped to ingratiate 
myself with his countrymen by expressing it. But I have 
always found that a true Scot resents your admiration 
of his compatriot, even more than he would your con- 

20 tempt of him. The latter he imputes to your "imper- 
fect acquaintance with many of the words which he 

1 There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them- 
selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no conse- 
quence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as hap- 
pen everyday; and this I have observed more frequently among the 
Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the 
minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of discourse, if 
it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well 
as accent and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly tol- 
erable. — Hints towards an Essay on Conversation. [C. L.] 



Imperfect Sympathies 103 

uses; " and the same objection makes it a presumption 
in you to suppose that you can admire him. — Thomson 
they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have neither 
forgotten nor forgiven for his delineation of Rory and his 
companion, upon their first introduction to our metrop- 5 
olis. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will 
retort upon you Hume's History compared with his 
Continuation of it. What if the historian had continued 
Humphrey CHnker? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They 10 
are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which 
Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra- 
mids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar 
intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have 
not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices 15 
cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of 
Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the 
one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on 
the other, between our and their fathers, must, and ought, 
to affect the blood of the children. I cannot beheve it 20 
can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, 
such as candour, hberality, the hght of a nineteenth cen- 
tury, can close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. 
A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is least dis- 
tasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all dis- 25 
tinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess 
that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Chris- 
tian, which has become so fashionable. The reciprocal 
endearments have, to me, something hypocritical and 



I04 Essays of EHa 

unnatural in them. I do not like to see the Church and 
Synagogue kissing and congeeing ^ in awkward postures of 
an affected civility. If they are converted, why do they 
not come over to us altogether ? Why keep up a form 
5 of separation, when the life of it is fled ? If they can 
sit with us at table, why do they keck ^ at our cookery? I 
do not understand these half convertites. Jews chris- 
tianizing — Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish 
or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding piece of 

10 anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue 

is essentially separative. B ^ would have been more 

in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his forefathers. 
There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature meant to 
be of — Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong in him, 

15 in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the 
Shibboleth. How it breaks out, when he sings, " The 
Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " The 
auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and 
he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mis- 

20 taking him. — B has a strong expression of sense in 

his countenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The 
foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with 
understanding, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would 
sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate charac- 

25 ter to each prohibition. His nation, in general, have not 

ever-sensible countenances. How should they ? — but 

you seldom see a silly expression among them. Gain, and 

the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard 

1 Bowing ceremoniously. 2 Retch. ^Braham, the tenor. 



Imperfect Sympathies 105 

of an idiot being born among them. — Some admire the 
Jewish female physiognomy. I admire it — but with 
trembling. Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with 
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of ten- s 
derness towards some of these faces — or rather masks — 
that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encoun- 
ters in the streets and highways. 1 love what Fuller beauti- 
fully calls — these " images of God cut in ebony." But 
I should not like to associate with them, to share my meals 10 
and my good-nights with them — because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate 
the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of 
the day when I meet any of their people in my path. 
When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the 15 
sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ven- 
tilator, Hghtening the air, and taking off a load from the 
bosom. But I cannot hke the Quakers (as Desdemona 
would say) "to Hve with them." I am all over sophis- 
ticated — with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. 20 
I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, 
jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim-whams, which 
their simpler taste can do without. I should starve at 
their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for 
the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for 25 
the angel, my gusto too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found 
to return to a question put to them may be explained, I 



io6 Essays of Elia 

think, without the vulgar assumption, that they are more 
given to evasion and equivocating than other people. 
They naturally look to their words more carefully, and 
are more cautious of committing themselves. They have 

5 a pecuhar character to keep up on this head. They stand 
in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law 
exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting 
to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all re- 
ligious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to intro- 

lo duce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds 
of truth — the one appHcable to the solemn affairs of 
justice, and the other to the common proceedings of 
daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience 
by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirma- 

istions of the shop and the market-place a latitude is ex- 
pected, and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn 
covenant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is 
common to hear a person say, " You do not expect me 
to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great 

20 deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, 
creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of second- 
ary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath- 
truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. 
A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple af- 

25 firmation being received, upon the most sacred occasions, 
without any further test, stamps a value upon the words 
which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of 
life. He looks to them, naturally, with more severity. 
You can have of him no more than his word. He knows, 



Imperfect Sympathies 107 

if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, 
for himself, at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. 
He knows that his syllables are weighed — and how far 
a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted 
against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect 5 
answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, 
might be illustrated, and the practice justified, by a more 
sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this 
occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is 
notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be 10 
traced to this imposed self-watchfulness — if it did not 
seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock 
of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the 
Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, 
to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and rack^ 15 
ing examinations. " You will never be the wiser, if I sit 
here answering your questions till midnight," said one of 
those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting 
law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter as the 
answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing 20 
composure of this people is sometimes ludicrously dis- 
played in lighter instances. — I was travelling in a stage- 
coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the 
straitest ^ nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to 
bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly 25 
supper, was set before us. My friends confined them- 
selves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. When 
the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my com- 
^That is, strictest; cf. Acts xxvi. 5. 



io8 Essays of Ella 

panions discovered that she had charged for both meals. 
This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and 
positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part 
of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good 

S lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard 
came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers 
pulled out their money, and formally tendered it — so much 
for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine — for 
the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in 

loher demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, 
as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest 
and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, 
who thought I could not do better than follow the example 
of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. 

15 The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs 
of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pro- 
nounced, became after a time inaudible — and now my 
conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while 
suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in 

20 the hope that some justification would be offered by these 
serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. 
To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the 
subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length 
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next 

25 neighbour, *' Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India 
House ? " and the question operated as a soporific on my 
moral feeling as far as Exeter. 



OLD CHINA 

I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china- 
closet, and next for the picture gallery. I cannot de- 
fend the order of preference, but by saying, that we 
have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to ad- 5 
mit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired 
one. I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhi- 
bition, that I was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a 
time when china jars and saucers were introduced into 
my imagination. 10 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now have? 
— to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that 
under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir- 
cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspec- 
tive — a china tea-cup. 15 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot 
diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our 
optics), yet on terra firm a still — for so we must in cour- 
tesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the deco- 
rous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up 20 
beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if 
possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young, and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to 
a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance 25 
109 



I lo Essays of Elia 

seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or an- 
other — for likeness is identity on tea-cups — is stepping 
into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this 
calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a 
S right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must 
infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — a 
furlong off on the other side of the same strange 
stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their 
world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.^ 
. lo Here — a cow and rabbit couchant,^ and coextensive 
— so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere 
of fine Cathay.^ 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our 
Hyson ^ (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink un- 

15 mixed still of an afternoon) some of these speciosa mira- 
cula ^ upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent 
purchase) which we were now for the first time using ; 
and could not help remarking, how favourable circum- 
stances had been to us of late years, that we could afford 

20 to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — 
when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows 

1 The name of an old English dance. 

2 Lying down ; a heraldic term. 

^ This name, which was applied by Marco Polo the explorer to 
the vaguely conjectured regions of the far East, came to be the 
poetic name for China. 

* A variety of tea. 

^ ^hining wonders ; phrase quoted from Horace. — Ars Poetica, 
144. 



Old China iii 

of my companion. I am quick at detecting these sum- 
mer clouds in Bridget. 

" I wish the good old times would come again," she 
said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, 
that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle state ; " 5 
— so she was pleased to ramble on, — " in which I am 
sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a' 
purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. 
Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a 
cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado I had to get you 10 
to consent in those times !) we w^ere used to have a de- 
bate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and 
against, and think what we might spare it out of, and 
what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equiva- 
lent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the 15 
money that we paid for it. 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made 
to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon 
you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that folio 
Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at 20 
night from Barker's in Covent Garden ? Do you remem- 
ber how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up 
our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a deter- 
mination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, 
when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too 25 
late — and when the old bookseller with some grumbling 
opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was ■ 
setting bedwards) Hghted out the rehc from his dusty 
treasures — and when you lugged it home, wishing it were 



112 Essays of Elia 

twice as cumbersome — and when you presented it to me 
— and when we were exploring the perfectness of it {col- 
lating ^ you called it) — and while I was repairing some of 
the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would 

5 not suffer to be left till daybreak — was there no pleasure 
in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes 
which you w^ear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, 
since w^e have become rich and finical, give you half the 
honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that 

lo overworn suit — your old corbeau^ — for four or five 
weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your 
conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — or sixteen 
shilhngs was it ? — a great affair we thought it then — 
which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can 

15 afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see 
that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now. 
" When you came home with twenty apologies for lay- 
ing out a less number of shillings upon that print after 
Leonardo, which we christened the * Lady Blanch ; ' when 

20 you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money — 
and thought of the money, and looked again at the pic- 
ture — was there no pleasure in being a poor man ? Now, 
you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and 
buy a wilderness of Leonardos, Yet do you ? 

25 " Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, 
and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday 

1 A critic's term for comparing passages in books; also a print- 
er's or librarian's term for verifying sheets and signatures in books. 

2 A draper's term; from corbeati, a raven. 



Old China 113 

— holidays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich — 
and the little handbasket in which I used to deposit our 
day's fare of savoury cold lamb and salad — and how you 
would pry about at noontide for some decent house, 
where we might go in, and produce our store — only pay- 5 
ing for the ale that you must call for — and speculate 
upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was 
likely to allow us a table-cloth — and wish for such an- 
other honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many 
a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went 10 
a fishing — and sometimes they would prove obliging 
enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon 
us — but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and 
would eat our plain food savourily, scarcely grudging Pis- 
cator his Trout Hall ? Now, when we go out a day's 15 
pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of 
the way — and go into a fine inn, and order the best of 
dinners, never debating the expense — which, after all, 
never has half the relish of those chance country snaps,^ 
when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a pre- 20 
carious welcome. 

" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in 
the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, 
when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender 
of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Chil-2s 
dren in the Wood — -when we squeezed out our shil- 
lings apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the 
one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time that you 
1 The term used now-a-days is snacks. 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 8 



1 14 Essays of Elia 

ought not to have brought me — and more strongly I 
felt obligation to you for having brought me — and the 
pleasure was the better for a little shame — and when 
the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the 
5 house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when 
our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola 
at the Court of Illyria? You used to say, that the gallery 
was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially — that 
the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the 

lo infrequency of going — that the company we met there, not 
being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend 
the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the 
stage — because a word lost would have been a chasm, 
which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such 

15 reflections we consoled our pride then — ^and I appeal to 
you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with less atten- 
tion and accommodation, than I have done since in more 
expensive situations in the house ? The getting in indeed, 
and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was 

20 bad enough, — but there was still a law of civility to women 
recognized to quite as great an extent as we ever found in 
the other passages — and how a little difficulty overcome 
heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterwards ! Now 
we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see, 

25 you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and 
heard too, well enough then — but sight, and all, I think, 
is gone with our poverty. 

" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they 
became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while 



Old China 115 

they were yet dear — to have them for a nice supper, a 
treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat 
ourselves now — that is, to have dainties a little above our 
means — ^it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very 
little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual 5 
poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat — when two 
people living together, as we have done, now and then in- 
dulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while 
each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the 
blame to his single share. I see no harm in people mak- 10 
ing much of themselves in that sense of the word. It may 
give them a hint how to make much of others. But now 
— what I mean by the word — we never do make much of 
ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean 
the veriest ^ poor of all, but persons as we were, just above 15 
poverty. 

" I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty 
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet — and 
much ado we used to have every Thirty- first Night of De- 
cember to account for our exceedings — many a long face 20 
did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriv- 
ing to make it out how we had spent so much — or that we 
had not spent so much — or that it was impossible we 
should spend so much next year — and still we found our 
slender capital decreasing — but then, betwixt ways, and 25 
projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talk 
of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the 

^Note the superlative sign on the adverb instead of the adjec- 
tive, making a delicate distinction in sense. 



1 1 6 Essays of Elia 

future — and the hope that youth brings, and laughing 
spirits (in which you were never poor till now,) we pocketed 
up our loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as 
you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as 

5 you called him), we used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' 
Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year 
— no flattering promises about the new year doing better 
for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 

lo that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 
how I interrupt it. I could not help,. however, smiling at 
the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had 

conjured up out of a clear income of poor hundred 

pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when we 

15 were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am 
afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to 
shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much 
mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as 
we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. 

20 It strengthened, and knit our compact closer. We could 
never have been what we have been to each other, if we 
had always had the sufficiency which you now complain 
of. The resisting power — those natural dilations of the 
youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten ^ — 

25 with us are long since passed away. Competence to age 
is supplementary youth ; a sorry supplement indeed, but 
I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, where we 

1 Note that this is not the same as straighten ; this means " to 
make narrow." Compare note on straitest, page 107, 



Old China 117 

formerly walked : live better, and lie softer — and shall be 
wise to do so — than we had means to do in those good 
old days you speak of. Yet could those days return — 
could you and I once more walk our thirty miles aday — 
could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you 5 
and I be young to see them — could the good old one- 
shilling gallery days return — they are dreams, my cousin, 
now — but could you and I at this moment, instead of 
this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting 
on this luxurious sofa — be once more struggHngup those 10 
inconvenient staircases, pushed about, and squeezed, and 
elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers 

— could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours — 
and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always 
followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the 15 
first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us 

— I know not the fathom Hne that ever touched a de- 
scent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth 

in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R ^ is supposed 

to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that 20 
merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big 
enough for a bed tester, over the head of that pretty in- 
sipid half-Madonnaish chit of a lady in that very blue 
summer-house." 

1 Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the eminent financier. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND 
READING 

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the 
forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of 
quahty and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts 
of his own. — Lord Foppington in The Relapse. 

5 An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much 
struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has 
left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of 
his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on 
this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsider- 

ro able portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I 
dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to 
lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walk- 
ing, I am reading ; I cannot sit and think. Books think 
for me. 

15 I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel 
for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read any- 
thing which I call a book.^ There are things in that shape 
which I cannot allow for such. 

In this catalogue of books which are no books — biblia 

20 a-biblia ^ — I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket 
Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered at the back, 
Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large ; the works 
of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, 

^ A Greek derivative = books that are not books. Note that from 
this word biblia comes our word bible. 



Thoughts on Books and Reading 119 

and, generally, all those volumes which " no gentleman's 
library should be without : " the Histories of Flavius 
Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philoso- 
phy. With these exceptions, I can read almost any- 
thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so-s 
unexcluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in 
books^ clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, 
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, 
thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down 10 
a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it is some 
kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what " seem its 
leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. 
To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find — Adam 
Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of block- 15 
headed Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or MetropoHtanas) set 
out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of 
that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering 
folios ; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old 
Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. 20 
I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to 
warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum 
of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it 
can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of 25 
books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Maga- 
zines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half- 
binding (with Russia backs ever) is oicr costume. A 
Shakespeare, or a Milton (unless the first editions), it 



I20 Essays of Elia 

were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The pos- 
session of them confers no distinction. The exterior of 
them (the things themselves being so common), strange 
to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of 
5 property in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, 
looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dog's eared. 
How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sul- 
lied leaves, and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour 
(beyond Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in 

lo fastidiousness, of an old " Circulating Library " Tom 
Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of 
the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages 
with delight ! — of the lone sempstress, whom they may 
have cheered (milliner, or harder-workirg mantua-maker) 

15 after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, 
when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to 
steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out 
their enchanting contents ! Who would have them a 
whit less soiled ? What better condition could we desire 

20 to see them in ? 

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands 
from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class 
of perpetually self-reproductive volumes — Great Nature's 
Stereotypes — we see them individually perish with less re- 

25 gret, because we know the copies of them to be " eterne." ^ 
But where a book is at once both good and rare — where 
the individual is almost the species, and when that 
perishes, 

iLamb borrows this form of the word from Macbeth. 



Thoughts on Books and Reading 1 2 1 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 
That can its hght relumine — 

such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of 
Newcastle, by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no 
casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such 5 
a jewel. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem 
hopeless ever to be reprinted ; but old editions of writers, 
such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his 
prose-works, Fuller — of whom we have reprints, yet the 10 
books themselves, though they go about, and are talked 
of here and there, we know, have not endenizened ^ them- 
selves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as 
to become stock books — it is good to possess these in du- 
rable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio 15 
of Shakespeare. (You cannot make a pet book of an 
author whom everybody reads.)^ I rather prefer the com- 
mon editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and 
^\\}a.plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, 
or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and without pre- 20 
tending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much 
better than the Shakespeare gallery engravings, which did. 
I have a community of feehng with my countrymen about 
his Plays, and I like those editions of him best, which have 
been oftenest tumbled about and handled. — On the con- 25 
trary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. 

1 Lamb's quaint preference for our term naturalize. 

2 The sentence in parenthesis was omitted in the collected edition. 



122 Essays of Elia 

The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no 
sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the 
current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them 
in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more 
5 heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melan- 
choly. What need was there of unearthing the bones 
of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a 
winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure ? 
what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever be- 

lo coming popular? — The wretched Malone could not do 
worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to 
let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakespeare, 
which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to 
the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, 

15 the very dress he used to wear — the only authentic testi- 
mony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts 
and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat 

of white paint. By , if I had been a justice of peace 

for Warwickshire, I would have clapped both commentator 

20 and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sac- 
rilegious varlets. 

I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble- 
tombs. 

Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names 

25 of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish 

to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or 

of Shakespeare ? It may be, that the latter are more 

staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweet- 

• est names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, 



Thoughts on Books and Reading 123 

are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, 
and Cowley. 

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. 
In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is 
quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy 5 
Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' 
sermons ? 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be 
played before you enter upon him. But he brings his 
music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile 10 
thoughts, and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of 
ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a 
season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale — 

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — to 15 
yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listen- 
ing. More than one — and it degenerates into an audi- 
ence. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are 
for the eye to gKde over only. It will not do to read 20 
them out. I could never listen to even the better kind 
of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. 

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the 
Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual 
time) for one of the clerks — who is the best scholar — 25 
to commence upon the Times, or the Chronicle, and recite 
its entire contents aloud pro bono publico} With every 
advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly 
1 For public good. 



124 Essays of Elia 

vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will 
get up, and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates 
as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. 
So the entire journal transpires at length by piecemeal. 
5 Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expedi- 
ent no one in the company would probably ever travel 
through the contents of a whole paper. 

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays 
one down without a- feeling of disappointment. 
10 What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, 
keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling 
out incessantly, "The Chronicle is in hand, Sir." 

Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your 
supper — what can be more dehghtful than to find lying 
15 in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the 
carelessness of some former guest — two or three num- 
bers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amus- 
ing tete-a-tete pictures — "The Royal Lover and Lady 

G ;" "The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," — 

20 and such like antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange 
it — at that time, and in that place — for a better book ? 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so 

much for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise 

Lost, or Comus, he could have I'ead to him — but he 

25 missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a 

magazine, or a light pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues 
of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide. 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than 



Thoughts on Books and Reading 125 

having been once detected — by a familiar damsel — re- 
clined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her 
Cythera), reading — Pamela. There was nothing in the 
book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure ; 
but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed de- 5 
termined to read in company, I could have wished it had 
been — any other book. We read on very sociably for a 
few pages ; and, not finding the author much to her taste, 
she got up, and — went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it 
to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was one 10 
between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in 
this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I 
cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minis- 
ter, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet 15 
Skinner's Street ivas not) , between the hours of ten and 
eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. 
I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond 
my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keep- 
ing clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter 20 
with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, would have 
quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and 
have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. 

There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never 
contemplate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not 25 
having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little 
learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his hard 
eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and 
thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly. 



126 Essays of Elia 

page after page, expecting every moment when he shall 
interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves 
the gratification, they *' snatch a fearful joy." Martin 

B , in this way, by daily fragments, got through two 

5 volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his 
laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger 
days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. de- 
clares, that under no circumstances of his life did he ever 
peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in 
lo those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has 
moralized upon this subject in two very touching but 
homely stanzas. 

I saw a boy with eager eye 

Open a book upon a stall, 
15 And read, as he'd devour it all ; 

Which when the stallman did espy. 

Soon to the boy T heard him call, 

" You, Sir, you never buy a book, 

Therefore in one you shall not look." 
20 The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 

He wish'd he never had been taught to read. 

Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. 

Of sufferings the poor have many, 

Which never can the rich annoy : 
25 I soon perceiv'd another boy, 

Who look'd as if he'd not had any 

Food, for that day at least — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 
30 Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny. 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No v^onder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its 
origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter- 
state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a 
full meal was something more than a common blessing ; 
when a belly-ful was a windfall, and looked like a special 5 
providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with 
which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty 
of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, 
existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is 
not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of 10 
food — the act of eating — should have had a particular 
expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that 
implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected 
to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various 
gifts and good things of existence. 15 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty 
other occasions in the course of the day besides my din- 
ner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, 
for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved 
problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual 20 
repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before Shake- 
speare — a devotional exercise proper to be said before 
reading the Fairy Queen? — but, the received ritual having 
prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of man- 
127 



128 Essays of Elia 

ducation,^ I shall confine my observations to the experi- 
ence which I have had of the grace, properly so called ; 
commending ray new scheme for extension to a niche in 
the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part 
5 heretical, Hturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo 
Humanus, for the use of a certain snug congregation 
of Utopian Rabelaesian Christians, no matter where as- 
sembled. 

The form then of the benediction before eating has 

lo its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and 
unprovocative repasts of children. It is here that the 
grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, 
who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next 
day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of 

15 the blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, 
into whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner 
could never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. 
The proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is 
barely contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is 

20 his daily bread,^ literally his bread for the day. Their 
courses are perennial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded 
by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appe- 
tite, leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. 

25 A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish 

^ A good example of Lamb's love of quaintness, — using an un- 
familiar word for a very common and familiar thing. Cf. p. 66, 
note I. 

2 An allusion to the petition for daily bread in the Lord''s Prayer'. 



Grace before Meat 129 

of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect 
upon the ordinance and institution of eating ; when he 
shall confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with 
the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or 
turtle. When I have sat (a varus hospesY at rich men's 5 
tables, with the savoury soup and messes steaming up the 
nostrils, and moistening the hps of the guests with desire 
and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduction of 
that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous 
orgasm ^ upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a 10 
religious sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to 
mutter out praises from a mouth that waters. The 
heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame of devotion. 
The incense which rises round is pagan, and the belly- 
god intercepts it for his own. The very excess of the 15 
provision beyond the needs, takes away all sense of pro- 
portion between the end and means. The giver is veiled 
by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of return- 
ing thanks — for what? — for having too much, while so 
many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. 20 

1 have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce ^ con- 
sciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. 

lAn uncommon guest. 

2 Moment of immoderate excitement; the word is an intention- 
ally exaggerated description. 

^The -ly of the adverbial form is omitted, perhaps, because to 
use it would make two consecutive words end in -ly ; but the 
omission is a frequent poetic license, and quite suitable to Lamb's 
usage in language. Cf. p. 6i, 1. 25. 

ESSAYS OF EI lA — Q 



ijo Essays of Elia 

I have seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame — 
a sense of the co-presence of circumstances which un- 
hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a 
few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into his com- 
S mon voice, helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get 
rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the 
good man was a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious 
in the discharge of the duty ; but he felt in his inmost 
mind the incompatibility of the scene and the viands be- 

lo fore him with the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Christians 

sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without 

remembering the Giver? — no — I would have them sit 

down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like 

15 hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they must 
pamper themselves with delicacies for which east and 
west are ransacked, I would have them postpone their 
benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; 
when the still small voice can be heard, and the reason of 

20 the grace returns — with temperate diet and restricted 
dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions 
for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read 
that he kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, 
when he put into the mouth of Celaeno anything but a 

25 blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the delicious- 
ness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is 
a meaner and inferior gratitude : but the proper object 
of the grace is sustenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not 
delicacies ; the means of life, and not the means of pam- 



Grace before Meat 



131 



pering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I 
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at 
some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last con- 
cluding pious word — and that, in all probability, the 
sacred name which he preaches — is but the signal for 5 
so many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, 
with as Httle sense of true thankfulness (which is temper- 
ance) as those Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the good man 
himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those 
foggy sensuous steams mingUng with and polluting the 10 
pure altar sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the 
banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, pro- 
vides for a temptation in the wilderness : 

A table richly spread in regal mode, 15 

With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 

And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 

In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 

Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore. 

Freshet or purling brook, for wliich was drained 20 

Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would 
go down without the recommendatory preface of a bene- 
diction. They are like to be short graces where the 
devil plays the host. — I am afraid the poet wants his usual 25 
decorum in this place. Was he thinking of the old Ro- 
man luxury, or of a gaudy-day at Cambridge ? This was a 
temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet 



13*2 Essays of Elia 

is too civic and culinary, and the accompaniments alto- 
gether a profanation of that deep, abstracted, holy scene. 
The mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend con- 
jures up, is out of proportion to the simple wants and 
plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him in 
his dreams, from his dreams might have been taught 
better. To the temperate fantasies of the famished Son 
of God, what sort of feasts presented themselves? — He 
dreamed indeed, 

3 — As appetite is wont to dream, 

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats ? — 

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 

And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
5 Food to Ehjah bringing, even and morn ; 

Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what thej^ brought: 

He saw the prophet also how he fled 

Into the desert, and how there he slept 

Under a juniper ; then how awaked 
3 He found his supper on the coals prepared, 

And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 

And ate the second time after repose. 

The strength whereof sufficed him forty days : 

Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, 
5 Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate 
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two 
visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of 



Grace before Meat 133 

what is called the grace have been the most fitting and 
pertinent ? 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but practically 
I own that (before meat especially) they seem to in- 
volve something awkward and unseasonable. Our appe- 5 
tites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our 
reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the 
great ends of preserving and continuing the species. 
They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a distance 
with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment of appetite 10 
(the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, 
the least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers who 
go about their business, Of every description, with more 
calmness than we, have more title to the use of these 
benedictory prefaces. I have always admired their silent 15 
grace, and the more because I have observed their appli- 
cations to the meat and drink following to be less pas- 
sionate and sensual than ours. They are neither gluttons 
nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a horse bolts 
his chopped hay, with indifference, calmness, and cleanly 20 
circumstances. They neither grease nor slop themselves. 
When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot 
imagine it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not in- 
different to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of 25 
deer's flesh were not made to be received with dispas- 
sionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting 
not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in 
higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one who pro- 



134 Essays of Ella 

fesses to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical 

character in the tastes for food. C ' holds that a man 

cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. 
I am not certain but he is right. With the decay of my 
5 first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for 
those innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have 
lost their gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which 
still seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient 
and querulous under culinary disappointments, as to come 

lo home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some 
savoury mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. 
Butter ill melted — that commonest of kitchen failures — • 
puts me beside my tenor. — The author of the Rambler 
used to make inarticulate animal noises over a favourite 

15 food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded 
by the grace ? or would the pious man have done better 
to postpone his devotions to a season when the bless- 
ing might be contemplated with less perturbation? I 
quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin face 

20 against those excellent things, in their way, jollity and 
feasting. But as these exercises, however laudable, have 
little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man should be 
sure, before he ventures so to grace them, that while he 
is pretending his devotions otherwhere, he is n6t secretly 

25 kissing his hand to some great fish — his Dagon — with 

a special consecration of no ark but the fat tureen before 

him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the 

banquets of angels and children ; to the roots and severer 

1 Coleridge : but it sounds more like Lamb himself. 



Grace before Meat 135 

repasts of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slen- 
derly acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble 
man : but at the heaped-up boards of the pampered and 
the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, less timed 
and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of s 
those better befitting organs would be, which children 
hear tales of, at Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our 
meals, or are too curious in the study of them, or too 
disordered in our application to them, or engross too 
great a portion of those good things (which should be 10 
common) to our share, to be able with any grace to say 
grace.^ To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our 
proportion is to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking 
sense of this truth is what makes the performance of this 
duty so cold and spiritless a service at most tables. In 15 
houses where the grace is as indispensable as the napkin, 
who has not seen that never settled question arise, as to 
who shall say it; while the good man of the house and 
the visitor clergyman, or some other guest behke of next 
authority from years or gravity, shall be bandying about 20 
the office between them as a matter of compliment, each 
of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burden of an 
equivocal duty from his own shoulders ? 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist 
divines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune 25 

1 The double sense in which Lamb here uses the word grace 
will remind the reader that throughout the essay he has had in 
mind the needed congruity between grace and gracefulness (see 
line 22 on preceding page, and p. 128, 1. 12). 



136 Essays of Elia 

to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. 
Before the first cup was handed round, one of these 
reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due 
solemnity, whether he choose to say anything. It seems 

5 it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short 
prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did 
not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explana- 
tion, with little less importance he made answer, that it 
was not a custom known in his church : in which cour- 

10 teous evasion the other acquiescing for good manner's 
sake, or in compliance with a weak brother, the supple- 
mentary or tea-grace was waived altogether. With what 
spirit might not Lucian have painted two priests, of his 
religion, playing into each other's hands the compliment 

15 of performing or omitting a sacrifice, — the hungry God 
meantime, doubtful of his incense, with expectant nos- 
trils hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two 
stools) going away in the end without his supper. 

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want rev- 

20 erence \ a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge 
of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigram- 
matic conciseness with which that equivocal wag (but my 
pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L.,^ when importuned for a 
grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, 

25 " Is there no clergyman here?" — significantly adding, 

" Thank G ." Nor do I think our old form at school 

quite pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald 
bread and cheese suppers with a preamble, connecting 
1 Charles Valentine Le Grice ; see p. 40, 1. i. 



Grace before Meat 137 

with that humble blessing a recognition of benefits the 
most awful and overwhelming to the imagination which 
religion has to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus} I re- 
member we were put to it to reconcile the phrase " good 
creatures," upon which the blessing rested, with the fare 5 
set before us, wilfully understanding that expression in a 
low and animal sense, — till some one recalled a legend, 
which told how in the golden days of Christ's,^ the young ♦ 
Hospitallers were wont to have smoking joints of roast 
meat upon their nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, 10 
commiserating the decencies, rather than the palates, of 
the children, commuted our flesh for garments, and gave 
us — horresco referens^ — trousers instead of mutton. 

1 " That was not the occasion for such things." — Quotation 
(somewhat changed) from Horace's Ars Poetica, 19. 
2 That is, Christ's Hospital, his old school. 
^"I tremble at the recollection." — Virgil's ^neid^ II, 204. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which ray friend 
M. -^ was obHging enough to read and explain to me, for 
the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, claw- 
ing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in 
5 Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely 
hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter 
of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of 
golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' 
holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of 

lo roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder 
brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner fol- 
lowing. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the 
woo'ds one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast ^ 
for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son 

15 Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing 
with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some 
sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling 
quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their 
poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together 

20 with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a 
building, you may think it), what was of much more im- 
portance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than 
nine in number, perished. China pigs have been es- 
teemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest 

25 periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost con- 
1 Manning. 2 Beech-nuts or acorns. 

138 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 139 

sternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of 
the tenement, which his father and he could easily build 
up again with a {ew dry branches, and the labour of an 
hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. 
While he was thinking what he should say to his father, 5 
and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of 
one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nos- 
trils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. 
What could it proceed from? — not from the burnt cot- 
tage — he had smelt that smell before — indeed this was 10 
by no means the first accident of the kind which had oc- 
curred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire- 
brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, 
weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same 
time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to 15 
think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were 
any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool 
them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. 
Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had comis away 
with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the 20 
world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he 
tasted — crackling ! ^ Again he felt and fumbled at the 
pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked 
his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length 
broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that 25 
smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; and, sur- 

1 A name common in England for the browned skin of a roast 
pig; in the plural it is used in America to name the scraps left after 
the fat has been tried out, in making lard. 



140 Essays of Ella 

rendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to 
tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the 
flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his 
beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking 
5 rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how 
affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's 
shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded 
not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling 
pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had 
10 rendered him quite caUous to any inconveniences he 
might feel in those remote quarters. His father might 
lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had 
fairly made an end of it, wben, becoming a little more 
sensible of his situation, something like the following 
15 dialogue ensued. 

" You graceless whelp, what have you got there devour- 
ing? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three 
houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but 
you must be eating fire, and I know not what — what have 
20 you got there, I say ? " 

" O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how 
nice the burnt pig eats."^ 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his 
son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a 
25 son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending 
it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the 
1 Colloquial usage, in the sense of taste, relish. 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 14 1 

fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out " Eat, eat, eat the burnt 
pig, father, only taste — O Lord," — with such Hke bar- 
barous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would 
choke. 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the 5 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put 
his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when 
the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his 
son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his 
turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour 10 
mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether 
displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript 
here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly sat 
down to the mess, and never left off till they had dis- 
patched all that remained of the litter. 15 

Bo- bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a 
couple of abominable wretches, who could think of im- 
proving upon the good meat which God had sent them. 
Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed 20 
that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently 
than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. 
Some would break out in broad day, others in the night- 
time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the 
house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which 25 
was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, 
seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At 
length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, 
and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, 



142 Essays of Elia 

then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, 
the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury 
begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits 
5 stood accused, • might be handed into the box. He 
handled it, and they all handled it, and burning their 
fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, 
and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, 
against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge 

10 which judge had ever given, — to the surprise of the 
whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all 
present — without leaving the box, or any manner of 
consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous 
verdict of Not Guilty. 

15 The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 
manifest iniquity of the decision : and, when the court 
was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs 
that could be had for love or money. In a few days his 
Lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. The 

20 thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen 
but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- 
mously dear all over the district. The insurance offices 
one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and 
slighter every day, until it was feared that the very 

25 science of architecture would in no long time be lost to 
the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, 
till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, 
Hke our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of 
swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 143 

{burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of con- 
suming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the 
rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, 
came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 
By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the 5 
most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make 
their way among mankind. — 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above 
given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so 
dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (es- 10 
pecially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any 
culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found 

in ROAST PIG. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps^s 
ohsoniorum} 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork — those hobbledehoys ^ — but a young and 
tender suckhng — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of 
the sty — with no original speck of the amor immundiHae,^ 20 
the hereditary failing of the- first parent, yet manifest — 
his voice as yet not broken, but something between a 

1 The Latin words are so incorporated with the English that it 
will be best to write the whole sentence : " Of all the delicacies in 
the whole zvorld of things to eat, I will maintain it to be the most 
delicate, — the chief of tidbits.^'' 

2 A name usually given to one in the raw, unformed, awkward 
age between youth and manhood. 

^ Love of dirt. Lamb here speaks playfully as if pigs were fallen " 
beings like mankind, and as if their original sin were love of dirt. 



144 Essays of Elia 

childish treble, and a grumble — the mild forerunner, or 
praeludium, ^ of a grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
ancestors ate them seethed/ or boiled — but what a 
5 sacrifice of the exterior tegument! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that 
of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crack- 
ling, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their 
share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the 

lo coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O 
call it not fat — but an indefinable sweetness growing up to 
it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the 
bud — taken in the shoot — in the first innocence — the 
cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food — 

15 the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna — or, rather, 
fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into 
each other, that both together make but one ambrosian 
result, or common substance. 

Behold him, while he is doing — it seemeth^ rather 

20 a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so 
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! — 
Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of 
that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes — radi- 
ant jellies — shooting-stars — 

1 Prelude, or first element. 

2 Lamb uses here first the old word, such as the ancestors used; 
then defines it in a modern term. 

3 Observe how, in the descriptive passage succeeding. Lamb 
lapses into the old form of the verbs; it is his whimsical way of 
decking out a commonplace subject with elaborate language. 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 145 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 
heth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to 
the grossness and indocility which too often accompany 
maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved 
a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — 5 
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation — from 
these sins he is happily snatched away — 

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his 10 
stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coal-heaver 
bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre 
in the grateful stomachof the judicious epicure — and for 
such a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is 15 
indeed almost too transcendent — -a delight, if not sinful, 
yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced 
person would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal 
taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach 
her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure 20 
bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her 
relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not 
with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might barter 
her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of 25 
the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of 
the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on 
him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — lO 



146 Essays of Elia 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of vir- 
tues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be 
unravelled without hazard, he is — good throughout. No 
part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, 
5 as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the 
least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours' fare. 

I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart 
a share of the good things of this life which fall to their 
lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I 

10 take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his 
relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. 
*' Presents," I often say, ^' endear Absents." Hares, 
pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chicken (those 
"tame villatic fowl "), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of 

15 oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to 
taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. 
But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like 
Lear, " give everything." I make my stand upon pig. 
Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good 

20 flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, 
slightingly, (under pretext of friendship, or I know not 
what) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I 
may say, to my individual palate — It argues an in- 
sensibility. 

25 I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. 
My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of 
a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, 
into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a 
smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 147 

to school (it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old 
beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of 
day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to con- 
sole him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the 
very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a 5 
present of — the whole cake ! I walked on a Httle, buoyed 
up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of 
self-satisfaction ; but before I had got to the end of the 
bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, 
thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to 10.- 
go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had 
never seen before, and who might be a bad man for 
aught I knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt 
would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not an- 
other — • would eat her nice cake — and what should I say 15 
to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I was to part 
with her pretty present — and the odour of that spicy cake 
came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and 
the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her 
joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed 20 
she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my 
mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of 
alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and 
above all I wished never to see the face again of that 
insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. 25 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing 
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipped to death 
with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obso- 
lete custom. The age of disciphne is gone by, or it 



148 Essays of Elia 

would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light 
merely) what effect this process might have towards inten- 
erating and dulcifying^ a substance, naturally so mild and 
dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a 

5 violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the 
inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. 
It might impart a gusto — ^ 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 

10 much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, 
supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death 
by whipping {per fiageliationem ex^rema?^) ^ supersidded 
SL pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than 
any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is 

15 man justified in using that method of putting the animal 
to death ?" I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a 
dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I be- 

20 seech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole 
hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out 
with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot 
poison them, or make them stronger than they are — but 
consider, he is a weakUng — a flower. 

1 These two quaint words are virtually defined by the words Pii/d 
and dulcet m the following line, making more tender and sweet. 

^ That is, a delicate refinement of taste. 

3 Lamb uses the Latin equivalent o{ death by xvhipping to intimate 
that the debate was conducted in Latin. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown 
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attrac- 
tive — but one of those tender novices, blooming through 
their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite 
effaced from the cheek — such as come forth with the 5 
dawn, or somewhat earher, with their little professional 
notes sounding like the peep peep of a young sparrow ; or 
liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their 
aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sunrise ? 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — lo 
poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth^ — 
these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without 
assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of 
chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, 15 
preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to wit- 
ness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than one's . 
self enter, one knew not by what process, into what 
seemed \k\^ fauces Averni'^ — to pursue him in imagina-20 
tion, as he went sounding on through so many dark sti- 
fling caverns, horrid shades ! — to shudder with the idea 

1 Here Lamb seems to use the word growth, in his quaint fashion, 
as almost equivalent to race or species. 

2 " The jaws of hell," phrase from Virgil's ^neid^ VI, 201. 

149 



150 Essays of Elia 

that " now, surely, he must be lost forever ! " — to revive 
at hearing his feeble shout of discovered daylight — and 
then (O fullness of delight) running out of doors, to 
come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge 
5 in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like 
some flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem to 
remember having been told, that a bad sweep was once 
left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the 
wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, certainly ; not 

10 much unhke the old stage direction in . Macbeth, where 
the " Apparition of a child crowned with a tree in his 
hand rises." 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in 
thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is 

IS better to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, 
and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair 
of kibed ^ heels (no unusual accompaniment) be super- 
added, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a 
tester.^ 

2 3 There is a composition, the groundwork of which I 
have understood to be the sweet wood yclept sassafras. 
This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered 
with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a 
delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy 

25 palate may relish it ; for myself, with every deference to 

the judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept 

open a shop (the only one he avers in London) for the 

vending of this " wholesome and pleasant beverage," on 

1 Chapped or chilblained. ^ jn modern slang a sixpence. 



The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 151 

the south side of Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge 
Street — the only Salopian'^ house, — I have never yet 
adventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin of his 
commended ingredients — a cautious premonition to the 
olfactories constantly whispering to me, that my stomach 5 
must infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I 
have seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed in dieteti- 
cal elegancies, sup it up with avidity. 

I know not by what particular conformation of the 
organ it happens, but I have always found that this com- 10 
position is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young 
chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles (sassafras 
is shghtly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the 
fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in 
dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these 15 
unfledged practitioners ; or whether Nature, sensible that 
she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of 
these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her 
sassafras for a sweet lenitive — but so it is, that no pos- 
sible taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney- 20 
sweeper can convey a dehcate excitement comparable to 
this mixture. Being penniless, they will yet hang their 
black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one 
sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those do- 
mestic animals — cats — when they purr over a new-found 25 
sprig of valerian. There is something more in these 
sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that 
1 The name given to sassafras tea was saloop, or salop. 



152 Essays of Elia 

his is the only Salopia7i house ; yet be it known to thee, 
Reader — if thou art one who keepest what are called good 
hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact — he hath a 
race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under 

5 open sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler cus- 
tomers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes 
meet) the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, 
and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume 
the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently 

10 to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honours 
of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between 
the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the 
kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least satis- 
factory odours. The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his 

15 o'ernight vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the un- 
genial fume, as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, 
and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 

This is Saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling — 
the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smok- 

20 ing cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to Covent 
Garden's famed piazzas — the dehght, and, oh I fear, too 
often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldest 
thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over 
the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it 

25 will cost thee but three halfpennies) and a slice of deli- 
cate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) — so may thy 
culinary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from 
thy worse-placed hospitahties, curl up a lighter volume to 
the welkin — so may the descending soot never taint thy 



The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 153 

costly well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick- 
reaching from street to street, of \hQ fired chimney, invite 
the ratthng engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb 
for a casual scintillation thy peace and pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely suspectible of street affronts ; s 
the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph 
they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of 
a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young 
sweep with something more than forgiveness. — In the last 
winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accus- 10 
tomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous 
slide brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled 
up with pain and shame enough — yet outwardly trying 
to face it down, as if nothing had happened — when the 
roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered me. 15 
There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to 
the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) 
in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun 
(so he thought it) worked themselves out at the corners 
of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, 20 
and soot-inflamed, yet twinkHng through all with such a joy, 
snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth — but Hogarth 
has got him already (how could he miss him ?) in the 
March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman — there he 
stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the 25 
jest was to last forever — with such a maximum of glee, 
and minimum of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin 
of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it — that 
I could have been content, if the honour of a gentleman 



154 Essays of Elia 

might endure it, to have remained his butt and his 
mockery till midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what 
are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy Hps (the 
5 ladies must pardon me) is a casket, presumably holding 
such jewels ; but, methinks, they should take leave to 
" air " them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine 
gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. 
Yet must I confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep 
lo a display (even to ostentation) of those white and shiny 
ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in man- 
ners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

15 It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct; a 
badge of better days ; a hint of nobility : — and, doubtless, 
under the obscuring darkness and double night of their 
forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and 
gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed 

20 pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these ten- 
der victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to 
clandestine, and almost infantile abductions ; the seeds of 
civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these 
young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly 

25 hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels 
mourning for their children, even in our days, countenance 
the fact ; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lament- 
able verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be 



The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 155 

but a solitary instance of good fortune, out of many 
irreparable and hopeless defiliations} 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years 
since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards 
is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in s 
which the late duke was especially a connoisseur) — en- 
circled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry 
coronets inwoven — folded between a pair of sheets whiter 
and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius — 
was discovered by chance, after all methods of search had 10 
failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. 
The little creature, having somehow confounded his pas- 
sage among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by 
some unknown aperture had alighted upon this magnifi- 
cent chamber; and, tired with his tedious explorations, 15 
was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose, 
which he there saw exhibited ; so, creeping between the 
sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, 
and slept like a young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle. — 20 
But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of 
what I have just hinted at in this story. A high instinct 
was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable 
that a poor child of that description, with whatever weari- 
ness he might be visited, would have ventured, under 25 
such a penalty, as he would be taught to expect, to un- 
cover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay 

1 It is not unlikely that Lamb coined this rare word himself, 
meaning, the abstraction of a child from its parent. 



156 Essays of Elia 

himself down between them, when the rug, or the carpet, 
presented an obvious couch, still far above his pretensions 
— is this probable, I would ask, if the great power of 
nature, which I contend for, had not been manifested 

5 within him, prompting to the adventure? Doubtless this 
young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me that he 
must be) was allured by some memory, not amounting to 
full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when he 
was used to be lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in just 

10 such sheets as he there found, into which he was now 
but creeping back as into his proper incunabula, ^ and 
resting-place. — By no other theory, than by this sentiment 
of a pre-existent state (as I may call it), can I explain a 
deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other system, so 

15 indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a 
belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, 
that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in 
these poor changehngs, he instituted an annual feast of 

20 chimney-sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate 
as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in 
Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair of St. 
Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before to the 
master-sweeps in and about the metropolis, confining the 

25 invitation to their younger fry. Now and then an elderly 
striphng would get in among us, and be good-naturedly 
winked at ; but our main body were infantry.^ One un- 

1 Cradle. Originally a neuter plural, meaning swaddling-clothes. 

2 A play on the word infant, to fit the military term main body. 



The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 157 

fortunate wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, 
had intruded himself into our party, but by tokens 
was providentially discovered in time to be no chimney- 
sweeper (all is not soot which looks so),^ was quoited ^ 
oat of the presence with universal indignation, as not 5 
having on the wedding garment ; but in general the great- 
est harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a conven- 
ient spot among the pens, at the north side of the fair, not 
so far distant as to be impervious to the agreeable hubbub of 
that vanity;^ but remote enough not to be obvious to the 10 
interruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests 
assembled about seven. In those little temporary parlours 
three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as sub- 
stantial, and at every board a comely hostess presided 
with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the 15 
young rogues dilated at the savour. James White, as head 
waiter, had charge of the first table ; and myself, with our 
trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered to the other 
two. There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, 
who should get at the first table — for Rochester in his 20 
maddest days could not have done the humours of the scene 
with more spirit than my friend. After some general ex- 
pression of thanks for the honour the company had done 
him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy 

1 A similar parody of the proverb, " All is not gold that glitters." 

2 Thrown as a quoit; the word used to connote the rough and 
unceremonious nature of the act. 

^ This word is used in allusion to Bunyan's Vanity Fair (in The Pil- 
grim'' s Progress), to connote the insignificance of things in the fair. 



158 Essays of Elia 

waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that 
stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing " the 
gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender 
salute, whereat the universal host would set up a shout 
5 that tore the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth 
startled the night with their brightness. O it was a pleas- 
ure to see the sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, 
with his more unctuous sayings — how he would fit the tid- 
bits to the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier Hnks for 

10 the seniors — how he would intercept a morsel even in the 
jaws of some young desperado, declaring it " must to 
the pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a 
gentleman's eating " — how he would recommend this slice 
of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender 

IS juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking their 
teeth, which were their best patrimony, — how genteelly he 
would deal about the small ale, as if it were wine, naming 
the brewer, and protesting, if it were not good, he should 
lose their custom ; with a special recommendation to 

20 wipe the lip before drinking. Then we had our toasts — 
" The King," — the " Cloth," — which, whether they un- 
derstood or not, was equally diverting and flattering ; — and 
for a crowning sentiment, which never failed, " May the 
Brush supersede the Laurel!" x\ll these, and fifty other 

25 fancies, which were rather felt than comprehended by his 
guests, would he utter, standing upon tables, and prefacing 
every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give me leave to pro- 
pose so and so," which was a prodigious comfort to those 
young orphans ; every now and then stuffing into his mouth 



The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 159 

(for it did not do to be squeamish on these occasions) 
indiscriminate pieces of those reeking sausages, which 
pleased them mightily, and was the savouriest part, you 
may believe, of the entertainment. 

Golden lads and lasses must, 5 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers 
have long ceased. He carried away with him half the 
fun of the world when he died — of my world at least. 
His old clients look for him among the pens ; and, missing i 
him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and 
the glory of Smithfield departed forever. 



DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERIE 

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, 
when they were children ; to stretch their imagination to 
the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, 
whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little 

5 ones crept about me the other evening to hear about 
their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house 
in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which 
they and papa lived) which had been the scene — so at 
least it was generally believed in that part of the country 

lo — of the tragic incidents which they had lately become fa- 
mihar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. 
Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their 
cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon 
the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down 

IS to the Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person pulled 
it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its 
stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of 
her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. 
Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their 

20 great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected 
by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of 
this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet 
in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of 
it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred 

25 living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which 
160 



Dream-Children; A Reverie i6i 

he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county ; 
but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her 
own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort 
while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was 
nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped s 
and carried away to the owner's other house, where they 
were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were 
to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the 
Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt draw- 
ing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, " that lo 
would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when 
she came to dife, her funeral was attended by a concourse 
of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the 
neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect 
for her memory, because she had been such a good and 15 
religious woman ; so good indeed that she knew all the 
Psaltery ^ by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament 
besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I 
told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great- 
grandmother Field once was ; and how in her youth she 20 
was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little right 
foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my look- 
ing grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in 
the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, 
and bowed her down with pain ; but it could never bend 25 
her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still 
upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I 

1 The more usual form is psalter. The word psaltery, in the 
Bible, designates a musical instrument. 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — II 



1 62 Essays of Elia 

told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber 
of the great lone house ; and how she believed that an ap- 
parition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding 
up and down the great staircase near where she slept, 
5 but she said " those innocents would do her no harm ; " 
and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I 
had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half 
so good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the in- 
fants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried 

lo to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to 
all her grandchildren, having us to the great house in the 
holidays, where I in particular used to spend many 
hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve 
Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old 

15 marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned 
into marble with them ; how I never could be tired .with 
roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty 
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, 
and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed 

20 out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, 
which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then 
a sohtary gardening man would cross me — and how the 
nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my 
ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden 

25 fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more 
pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy- 
looking yew trees, or the firs, and picking up the red ber- 
ries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but 
to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with 



Dream-Children, A Reverie 163 

all the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the 
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along 
with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth — ' 
or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish- 
pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there 5 
a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in 
silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — 
I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than 
in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, 
and such like common baits of children. Here John slyly 10 
deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, 
not unobserved by Ahce, he had meditated dividing 
with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for 
the present as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more 
heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grand- 15 
mother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an espe- 
cial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John 

L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, 

and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about 
in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the 20 
most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no 
bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over 
the county in a morning, and join the hunters when 
there were any out — and yet he loved the old great 
house and gardens too, but had too much spirit toss 
be always pent up within their boundaries — and 
how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as 
he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but 
of their great-grandmother Field most especially ; and 



164 Essays of Elia 

how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a 
lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit older than me — 

• many a mile when I could not walk for pain ; — and how 
in after Hfe he became lame-footed too, and I did not al- 
5 ways (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he 
was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how 
considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed ; 
and how when he died, though he had not been dead an 
hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such 

10 a distance there is betwixt life and death ; and how I bore 
his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards 
it haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not cry 
or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would 
have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, 

15 and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I 
missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and 
wished him to be alive again, to be quarreUing with him 
(for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him 
again, and was as uneasy without him, as he their poor 

20 uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb. 
Here the children fell a crying, and asked if their little 
mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John, 
and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about 
their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their 

25 pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long 
years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet per- 
sisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W n ^ ; and, as 

much as children could understand, I explained to them 
^This name, according to Lamb, was feigned. 



Dream-Children; A Reverie 165 

what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in maidens 
— when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first 
Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-pre- 
sentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood 
there before me, or whose that bright hair was ; and 5 
while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew 
fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till 
nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in 
the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely 
impressed upon me the effects of speech : " We are not 10 
of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The 
children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing ; 
less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might 
have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of 
Lethe milHons of ages before we have existence, and a 15 
name" — and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly 
seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, 
with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — but 
John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

Sera tamen respexit 
Libertas. virgil.i 

A Clerk I was in London gay. o'keefe. 

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste 
the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the 
irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy prison 
days prolonged through middle age down to decreptitude 

5 and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite ; to 
have lived to forget that there are such things as hoHdays, 
or to remember them but as the prerogatives of child- 
hood ; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate 
my deliverance. 

lo It is now six and thirty years since I took my seat at 
the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transi- 
tion at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the fre- 
quently-intervening vacations of school-days, to the eight, 
nine, and sometimes ten hours' a day attendance at a 

15 counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to any- 
thing. I gradually became content — doggedly con- 
tented, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, 
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of 

20 worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted 

1 " Freedom though belated thought [on me]." Quotation, some- 
what changed round, from Eclogues, i. 27. 
166 



The Superannuated Man 167 

for days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there 
is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight 
in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the 
music, and the ballad-singers — the buzz and stirring 
murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. 5 
The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glit- 
tering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, 
and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which 
make a week-day saunter through the less busy parts of 
the metropolis so delightful — are shut out. No book 10 
stalls dehciously to idle over — No busy faces to recreate 
the idle man who contemplates them ever passing by — 
the very face of business a charm by contrast to his tem- 
porary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but 
unhappy countenances — or half-happy at best — of eman- 15 
cipated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and 
there a servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, 
slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the 
capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily expressing 
the hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers 20 
in the fields on that day look anything but comfortable. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day 
at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and 
air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last 
was a great indulgence ; and the prospect of its recur- 25 
rence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and 
made my durance tolerable. But when the week came 
round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep 
touch with me ? or rather was it not a series of seven uii- 



1 68 Essays of Elia 

easy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a 
wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of 
them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? 
Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the 
5 desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks 
that must intervene before such another snatch would 
come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something 
of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. 
Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained 

lo my thraldom. 

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever 

been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of 

' incapacity for business. This, during my latter years, 

had increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all 

IS the lines of my countenance. My health and my good 
spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, 
to which I should be found unequal. Besides my day- 
light servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, 
and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, 

20 errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of 
age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. 
I had grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had 
entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon 

25 the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not 
know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my em- 
ployers, when, on the fifth of last month, a day ever to 

be remembered by me, L , the junior partner in the 

firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my 



The Superannuated Man 169 

bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So 
taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and 
added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged 
to resign his service. He spoke some words of course 
to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole 5 
week I remained labouring under the impression that I 
had acted imprudently in my disclosure ; that I had fool- 
ishly given a handle against myself, and had been antici- 
pating my own dismissal. A week passed in this manner, 
the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole 10 
life, when on the evening of the 12th of 'April, just as 
I was about quitting my desk to go home (it might be 
about eight o'clock) I received an awful summons to 
attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the 
formidable back parlour. I thought, now my time is surely 15 
come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told that 

they have no longer occasion for me. L , I could 

see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief 

tome, — when to my utter astonishment B , the eldest 

partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length 20 
of my services, my very meritorious conduct during the 
whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did he find 
out that? I protest I never had the confidence to think 
as much). He went on to descant on the expediency of 
retiring at a certain time of life (how my heart panted !) 25 
and asking me a few questions as to the amount of my 
own property, of which I have a little, ended with a pro- 
posal, to which his three partners nodded a grave assent, 
that I should accept from the house, which I had served 



lyo Essays of Elia 

so well, a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of 
my accustomed salary — a magnificent offer ! I do not 
know what I answered between surprise and gratitude, 
but it was understood that I accepted their proposal, and 
5 1 was told that I was free from that hour to leave their 
service. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten minutes 
after eight I went home — forever. This noble benefit — 
gratitude forbids me to conceal their names — - 1 owe to 
the kindness of the most munificent firm in the world — 
lothe house of Boldero, Merry weather, Bosanquet, and 

Lacy. 

Esto perpetua I ^ 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. 
I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused 

IS to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking 1 was 
happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the condi- 
tion of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose 
after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust my- 
self with myself. It was like passing out of Time into 

20 Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have 
his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more 
time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a 
poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly hfted up into 
a vast revenue ; I could see no end of my possessions ; 

25 1 wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my 

estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons 

grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without 

weighing their own resources, to forego their customary 

1 Be thou continual. 



The Superannuated Man 171 

employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. 
I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are 
sufficient ; and now that those first giddy raptures have 
subsided, I have a quiet home feeling of the blessedness 
of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holi- s 
days, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy 
upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not walk all day 
long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty 
miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were 
troublesome, I could read it away ; but I do not read in 10 
that violent measure, with which, having no Time my 
own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my 'head 
and eyesight in bygone winters. I walk, read or scribble 
(as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt 
after pleasure ; I let it come to me. I am like the man 15 

that's born, and has his years come to him, 



In some green desert. 

"Years," you will say! "what is this superannuated 
simpleton calculating upon? He has already told us, 
he is past fifty." 20 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct 
out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, 
and not to myself, and you will find me still a young 
fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man can 
properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; 25 
the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, 
is other people's time, not his. The remnant of ray poor 
days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three- 



172 Essays of Elia ' 

fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long 
as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three sura. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the 
commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces 

5 are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had 
intervened since I quitted the Counting House. I could 
not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The part- 
ners, and the clerks, with whom I had for so many years, 
and for so many hours in each day of the year, been 

10 closely associated — being suddenly removed from them 
— they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, 
which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by 
Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death : 
'Twas but just now he went away; 



15 I have not since had time to shed a tear; 

And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to 
20 go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old 
desk- fellows — my co-brethren of the quill — that I had 
left below in the state militant. Not all the kindness 
with which they received me could quite restore to me 
that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed 
25 among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but 
methought they went off but faintly. My old desk ; the 
peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. 
I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. 
D 1 take me, if 1 did not feel some remorse — beast, 



The Superannuated Man 173 

if I had not, — at quitting my old compeers, the faithful 
partners of my toils for six and thirty years, that smoothed 
for me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness 
of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then 
after all? or was I a coward simply? Well, it is too late 5 
to repent ; and I also know, that these suggestions are a 
common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my 
heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands be- 
twixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be 
some time before I get quite reconciled to the separa- 10 
tion. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for again 
and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your 

leave. Farewell Ch ,^ dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! 

Do ^ mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI ^ 

officious to do, and to volunteer, good services! — and 15 
thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a 
Whittington of old, stately House of Merchants ; with thy 
labyrinthine passages, and light- excluding, pent up offices, 
where candles for one half the year supplied the place of 
the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern 20 
fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, and not 
in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, 
my " works ! " There let them rest, as I do from my 
labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio 
than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful ! My mantle 1 25 
bequeath among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first 
communication. At that period I was approaching to 

1 John Chambers. ^ Henry Dodwell. ^ W. D. Plumley. 



174 Essays of Elia 

tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm 
indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the first 
flutter was left; an unsettling sense of novelty ; the dazzle 
to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old 
5 chains, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary pan 
of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cel- 
lular discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon 
the world. I am now as if I had never been other than 
my own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, 

10 to do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in 
the day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have 
been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. 
I digress into Soho, to explore a book stall. Methinks I 
have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing 

15 strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture 
in the morning. Was it ever otherwise ? What is become 
of Fish Street Hill ? Where is Fenchurch Street ? Stones 
of old Mincing Lane, which I have worn with my daily 
pilgrimage for six and thirty years, to the footsteps of what 

20 toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints^ now vocal? I 
indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is Change time, 
and I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no 
hyperbole when I ventured to compare the change in my 
condition to a passinginto another world. Time stands still 

25 in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction of season. 
I do not know the day of the week, or of the month. Each 
day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to 

1 Reference to the paving-stones, which in England are flint; but 
the phrase is Shakespearean. See Romeo and Juliet, II, 6, 17. 



The Superannuated Man 175 

the foreign post-days ; in its distance from, or propinquity 
to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my 
Saturday nights' sensations. The genius of each day was 
upon me distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my ap- 
petite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with the 5 
dreary five to follow, sat as a load upon my poor Sabbath 
recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? 
What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. 
Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a holiday as it 
too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, 10 
and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out 
of it — is melted down into a week-day. I can spare to go 
to church now, without grudging the huge cantle^ which it 
used to seem to cut out of the hohday. I have Time for 
everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt 15 
the man of much occupation when he is busiest. I can 
insult^ over him with an invitation to take a day's pleas- 
ure with me to Windsor this fine May morning. It is Lu- 
cretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have 
left behind in the world, carking and caring ; like horses 20 
in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round — and 
what is it all for ? A man can never have too much Time 
to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would 
christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should do nothing. Man, 
I verily beheve, is out of his element as long as he is op- 25 
erative. I am altogether for the life contemplative. Will 

1 A piece, fragment. 

2 An unusual and somewhat archaic employment of the word in- 
sult as an intransitive verb. 



176 Essays of Elia 

no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those accursed 
cotton-mills? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and 
bowl it down 

As low as to the fiends. 

5 I am no longer ******j clerk to the Firm of &c. I am 
Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I 
am already come to be known by my vacant face and care- 
less gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with any 
settled purpose. I walk about ; not to and from. They 

10 tell me, a certain cum dignitate^ air, that has been buried 
so long with my other good parts, has begun to shoot 
forth in my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. 
When I take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the 
opera. Opus operatum esi.'^ I have done all that I came 

15 into this world to do. I have worked task-work, and have 
the rest of the day to myself. 

1 From the phrase otium cum dignitate, ease with dignity. 

2 The play (or ceremony) has been performed. 



NOTES 

The heavy marginal figures stand for page, and the lighter ones for line. 

As intimated in the Introduction^ the essays here chosen for 
reading are largely autobiographical ; not however in the factual 
sense. They are rather in the nature of what are sometimes called 
Confessions ; being the record of the writer's {i.e. James Elia's) 
tastes, sympathies, and sentiments, given not at all in a didactic 
way, but conversationally, as if friend were talking with friend. 

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO 
Pages 21-41 

To enter rightly into the feeling of this essay, one needs to put 
one's self into the position indicated in the title. The writer, with 
the experience and judgement of an elderly man, is recalling his 
school-days across a chasm of thirty-five years ; bringing up again 
not m regret but in keen realization the school-boy fare, the juve- 
nile trials and joys, the teachers as seen through the eyes both of 
boy and man, and the schoolmates who long ago left school for the 
world of success and failure. If you are attentive, two things will 
grow upon you as you read : how intimately Lamb enters into a 
boy's life and feelings ; and how much more he makes them mean 
than the boy himself realized in the time of boyhood, though now 
that it is told it will be recognized as true. 

21 : I. Mr. Lamb's "Works." It must be borne in mind that 
Lamb published these essays not under his own name but under 
the assumed signature of Elia ; hence his reference to another 
paper of his own, as if it were the work of some one else. In 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 12 1 7 7 



178 Notes 

Recollections of ChrisVs Hospital, to which he refers, he gives a 
eulogistic account of his old school, much after the manner of a 
commendatory circular, but designed in part to defend it against 
certain charges of favouritism which had been brought against the 
directors of it. The present essay, which is written less in the 
business-like and more in the literary style, is designed in part to 
give another side of the picture, not shunning what would seem to 
make against the school life or the instructors. Lamb's earlier 
writings, in prose and verse, now little read by the side of the Elia 
essays, were gathered into two volumes of Lamb's Works, in 1818. 
— 2. My old school. Christ's Hospital, which the names of its 
two eminent pupils, Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
have perhaps done more than any other names to make famous, 
otherwise called the Blue-coat school, was a charity-school founded 
in 1552 by Edward VI. in generous response to a sermon on charity 
by Bishop Ridley. His object was "to take out of the streets all 
the fatherless children and other men's children that were not able 
to keep them, and to bring them to the late dissolved house of the 
Grey Friars, which they devised to be a hospital for them, where 
they should have meat, drink, and clothes, lodging and learning, 
and officers to attend upon them." Its scope was afterward some- 
what enlarged so as to take in not only the children of the very 
poor but the children of reduced or embarrassed parents of what- 
ever class. Formerly in Newgate Street, the school is now removed 
to Sussex, near the village of Horsham. — 7. The cloisters. The 
school building, as the foregoing note shows, was "the late dis- 
solved house of the Grey Friars," that is, a cloister or monastery. 

21: II. Advantages, which I . . . had not. Though speak- 
ing of himself. Lamb is of course assuming the personality of Elia. 
Apart from this natural literary device, however, this may perhaps 
be taken as the occasion for speaking of a trait of Lamb's for which 
the reader must always be prepared, namely, a kind of Puckish 
delight in mystifying his reader about literal facts. He holds him- 
self free to attribute sayings or experiences to whatever person it 



Notes 



179 



best suits him to; changes names of places and persons; mingles 
his own impressions with those of ethers as he will. Some instances 
of these things will be pointed out ; it would, however, serve no 
practical purpose to trace them minutely. The trait is clue partly 
to Lamb's whimsey and sly humour, but more truly, I think, to his 
fine literary sense of the value he would impart to the reader. For 
first, if we should study the instances carefully we should doubtless 
find that he has thereby created in each case the situation adapted 
to produce the best effect; and secondly, he does not want his 
reader to take his description as a piece of cold information, to be 
believed and verified like history, but rather to take it according to 
the sentiment or impression which conslitutes its real inner value. 
— 12. His friends lived in town. Lamb's family lived in apart- 
ments in the Inner Temple, where his father, a man of sterling 
character and considerable culture, was a kind of upper servant or 
private secretary to one of the benchers, Samuel Salt. Lamb has 
described the character and occupation of his father, under the name 
of Lovel, in his essay on The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. — 
17. His tea and hot rolls. If it seems odd that Lamb should, in 
describing his old school after thirty-five years, be so particular to 
describe the fare, it should be remembered that Lamb was only 
seven and a half years on entering (in 1782), and left the school 
when he was less than fourteen; hence the impressions he retains 
are those of a young boy, to whom eating and holidays and play and 
punishments are the vivid events of life. And from this point on we 
are to realize how truly Lamb speaks as it were through a boy's con- 
sciousness, and of boys' affairs, while as a man he can look back and 
get the meanings of these as boys in the time of them could not. — 
22: 22. By his maid or aunt. His father's sister, Aunt Hetty 
(more properly Sarah) Lamb, who regarded him as her special 
favourite. She is described in his essay on My Relations. 

23 : 2. Those cates which the ravens ministered. A reference 
to the story of Elijah "the Tishbite " fed by ravens, i Kings xvii; 
but he gets his imagination of the food, probably, from Paradise 



i8o Notes 

Regained, ii. 266-270. See Grace before Meat, 132 : 13-16, where 
the same story is again referred to and Milton's lines quoted. 
— 3. The contending passions of L. Note these carefully as he 
enumerates them in the next sentence, — the feelings of a sensitive, 
shy, yet sympathetic boy. Note how a tender regard for others' 
feeHngs dominates, and a shrinking from being favoured above his 
mates. It was this character which endeared him, not only in 
school but throughout his life, to his friends; it is the constant and 
spontaneous expression of this character which, as an undertone to 
every subject he writes about, makes him the best-loved writer of 
English hterature. 

23 : 1 1. I was a poor friendless boy. Having spoken of Lamb, 
he now describes himself (writing as Elia) ; but the one whom he 
is really describing here is his schoolmate, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
(i 772-1834), who entered the school on the same day with him 
(July 17, 1782), coming from Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, how- 
ever, not "Calne in Wiltshire" (1. 26), as Elia intimates of himself. 

23 : 20. the cruelty. It is characteristic of Lamb to feel deeply 
the homesickness and loneliness of his schoolmate. Coleridge him- 
self has described how unhappy he was in his early days at school. 

24: I. Whole-day-leaves. Days (saints' days, king's birthdays, 
and others), on which the pupils could be absent from the Hospital 
the entire day. Though the vacations were short, there was, as 
compensation, a generous allowance of these whole-day-leaves. — 
5. Which L. recalls with such relish. In Recollections of Christ's 
Hospital, the description is : " our delightful excursions in the 
summer holidays to the New River near Newington, where, like 
others, we would live the long day in the water, never caring for 
dressing ourselves when we had once stripped." — ii. Pennyless. 
Note that this word has a somewhat different shade of meaning 
from the commonly spelled word penniless; for which latter 
see 151 : 22. 

25 : I. L.'s governor was Mr. Samuel Salt, a bencher- of the 
Inner Temple and the employer of Lamb's father; see note on 



Notes 



n 



21 : 12. More strictly, then, Lamb's father lived under the gov- 
ernor's roof. — 8. I have been called out of my bed. As this is 
Elia speaking, the indignity might have happened of any one; the 
cruelty of it, like the homesickness mentioned on 23, 20-26 is 
made more vivid by being told of a " poor friendless boy." 

26 : II. Leads of the ward. Sheets of lead roofing. — 12. Better 
than a week. An old-fashioned way of saying ??iore than, with a 
somewhat diminished stress, like rather more than a week. — 
13. Cry roast meat. A colloquial expression for betraying one's 
good fortune; it is defined four lines below. — 16. Waxing fat, 
and kicking. Like Jeshurun in Deuteronomy xxxii. 15; a re- 
proach brought against the people of Israel in Moses' song. Re- 
ferred to again in Grace before Meat, 130 : 22. — 19. A ram's horn 
blast, etc. Lamb draws his allusion from the account of the tak- 
ing of Jericho in Joshua vi, adapting it to a somewhat modified ap- 
plication. — 21. The client, i.e. the ass, was sent to Smithfield 
market. It is Lamb's whimsical way to speak of the ass and the 
boy as client and patron. — 24. L.'s admired Perry. In the 
former article this steward is represented as much loved by the 
boys; here, by one who writes with a sense of the mischief that 
could be perpetrated, it is intimated that he was lax in duty, and 
another instance of his negligence is given in the next paragraph. 

26 : 25. Facile administration. Explain how this is a euphe- 
mism with a touch of irony. Note how the magnificence of the room 
is made to intensify the contrast, as presented by the half-starved 
youngsters. — 27: 11. In the hall of Dido. The line here given 
is adapted, not quoted, from Virgil's j^neid, i. 464. 

27 : 19. suffered. In the key of names which Lamb drew 

up to explain these blanks, he leaves this person unidentified, per- 
haps from unwillingness to wound the sensibilities of persons still 
living. — 21. 'Twas said, etc. This also is not a quotation but an 
adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra, i. 4, 67, 68. 

28 : 7. The accursed thing. Scripture phraseology, taken from 
the story of Achan,/i3^/^z^^ vii. 13. — 29 : 18. Did not do quite so 



1 82 Notes 

well by himself. The whole foregoing story of his classmate is 
an example of Lamb's characteristic kindness of judgement. He 
contrives to make the self-sacrifice of the boy stand out beyond 
anything else; and when he traces his after life of poverty and 
perhaps shiftlessness he intimates it in the softest terms. 

29 : 20. I was a hypochondriac lad. This trait helps us to 
realize more vividly what he is about to describe, and adds to the 
poignancy of the described suffering. The choice of details, the 
implied contrasts and likenesses, make together a powerful appeal 
to the sympathetic imagination. — 27. Bedlam cells. The English 
name for an insane asylum is Bedlam; a name said to be corrupted 
from Bethlehem. 

31 : 3. Disfigurements in Dante. The imprisoned souls in 
Dante's Inferno are represented as bodies in various distorted and 
disfigured guises, and some of thtm endeavoured to lay hold on the 
poet as he passed. — 5. L.'s favourite state-room. Lamb, as Elia, 
takes perverse delight in throwing despite on the sentiments, or 
tastes, shown by Lamb in his proper person, in the former article. 
In 11. 3-12 on p. 27, he has made the splendour of the room accentu- 
ate by contrast the famine of the boys; now similarly he makes it 
enhance the sense of the iniquity and cruelty of the punishment; 
and this by extreme lightness of touch. — 15. The uttermost 
stripe. Lamb here imitates scripture phraseology; see Matthew v. 
26, which speaks of "the uttermost farthing." 

32 : 7. Never happier, than in them. By this remark Lamb 
prepares his reader for the description of the idle and careless 
school life which was led under Matthew Field; a description 
probably somewhat exaggerated for effect. — 25. " Like a dancer." 
This phrase, the meaning of which explains itself, is quoted from 
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 11. 36. Lamb quotes 
it again in his essay, Mrs. Battle'' s Opinions on Whist. — 
33: 19. Rousseau and John Locke. Mentioned here because 
both were authors of treatises on education, and would have been 
amused to see these occupations of the juvenile mind. 



Notes 183 

34 : 9. Helots to his young Spartans. Helots, in Greece, were 
drunken slaves, who were exhibited by Spartan parents to their 
children as a warning. The boys on Lamb's side of the school 
were regarded as a similar "awful example" to Mr. Boyer's rigor- 
ously disciplined boys. — 15. By the Samite. Pythagoras the 
philosopher, a native of Samos, who compelled his pupils to listen 
to his lectures five years before speaking in response. The silence 
that he enjoyed, then, was like that of Boyer's rigidly disciplined 
classes. — 16. Our little Goshen. In Exodus viii. 22, the land 
of Goshen, in which the children of Israel dwelt, was set apart 
as a place where they were clear of the plagues that troubled 
the land of Egypt. — 21. Our fleece was dry. For this allusion 
Lamb refers to Cowley {llie Complaint, stanza 7), but in the Bible 
story. Judges vi. 36-40, the miracle was wrought successively both 
ways; first the ground dry and the fleece wet, and the second time 
as indicated here. 

36 : 16. Into his lair. Note how the use of this word fits with 
the description of Boyer as a sort of wild beast. 

37 : 9. This exquisite irrecognition, etc. A good sentence to 
study for its choice of words to convey a subtle and delicate 
thought. 

37: 13. L. has given credit, etc. The reference is to Lamb's 
^2s\\tK ^■~,%2iy, Recollections of Chrisfs Hospital ; ^ee note 21 : I. In 
this summarizing paragraph, Coleridge's " literary life " is his work 
entitled Biographia Literaria. " The author of the Country Spec- 
tator " was Thomas Fanshawe Middleton ; see next paragraph. 
One sentence from Lamb's former essay may illustrate, as do all 
the coming paragraphs of this essay, his kindly habit, in passing 
judgement on persons, of making the good overbalance the bad : 
" He was a disciplinarian, indeed, of a different stamp from him 
whom I have just described; but, now the terrors of the rod, and 
of a temper a little too hasty to leave the more nervous of us quite 
at our ease to do justice to his merits in those days, are long since 
over, ungrateful were we if we should refuse our testimony to that 



184 Notes 

unwearied assiduity with which he attended to the particular im- 
provement of each of us." 

38 : 23. To bear his mitre high. The mitre is the symbol of 
the bishop's office, as is the crown of the king's. Lamb takes oc- 
casion to point the contrast between the bishop's official conduct 
and his real character. 

39 : 13. Come back into memory. By the apostrophe and the 
impassioned style of the address Lamb conveys the impression of 
his special love for his friend Coleridge, v^'ho indeed remained 
Lamb's intimate friend and correspondent until his death. — 
15. The dark pillar not yet turned. An allusion to the melan- 
cholia that for a large part of Coleridge's life rendered him unfit 
for effective work; a state owing largely to his intemperate use of 
opium. The allusion is put in a scriptural image taken from the 
pillar of cloud and fire, and especially from the incident noted in 
Exodus xiv. 20, where the pillar at once gave light to the Israelites 
and was dark to the Egyptians; that is, it had in that historical 
case a light and a dark side. — 26. Old Fuller. Thomas Fuller 
(1608-1661), who in his Worthies of England, under Warwick- 
shire, makes this comparison between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. 
See note, 105 : 8. 

40 : 9. Nor shalt thou ... be quickly forgotten. Apostrophe 
again. If Lamb responded so fervently to Coleridge's genius and 
personal friendship, it was also in him to recall with almost equal 
fervour a sunny humorous nature, like that of Allen. 

41 : 4. Poor Sizars. Students who, on account of extreme pov- 
erty, have free commons. It is to be noted how, in the case of 
both these partial failures, Lamb leaves the reader with the sense 
of the nobler and redeeming qualities. If he could not record some 
good thing of a man, he passed him by in silence ; see 39 : 9-12. 



Notes 185 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

Pages 42-49 

The caption of this essay is more truly an almost casual note of 
place than a real title. What Lamb set out to write about is indi- 
cated iu the concluding paragraph of the essay on My Relations^ 
which in the complete edition stood just before this. In that 
essay he mentioned his two cousins, James and Bridget Elia; and 
then, having under the first name given a description of his brother, 
John Lamb, thus proceeds : " In my next. Reader, I may perhaps 
give you some account of my cousin Bridget — if you are not 
already surfeited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if you 
are willing to go with us, on an excursion which we made a sum- 
mer or two since, in search of more cousins — 

" Through the green fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." 
This essay thus, availing itself of its informal type of discourse, is 
virtually two essays in one. 

42 : I. Bridget Elia, whom Elia calls his cousin, is Charles 
Lamb's sister Mary, of whom, as an occasional invalid, he is taking 
care for life ; see Introduction, p. 1 7. We shall find her mentioned 
again, and traits of hers described, in the essay on Old China, 
p. no ff. In the essay on Mrs. Battlers Opinions on Whist, too, he 
remarks : " When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I some- 
times call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with my 
cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia." There is no mistaking the tone of 
affection, and perhaps admiration, with which she is described. — 
6. To go out upon the mountains, an allusion to Jephthah's 
daughter ; see Judges xi. 37. There is perhaps a touch of the 
whimsical in Ella's making himself, an old bachelor rather than a 
maid, bewail his celibacy. — 9. " With a difference." This quo- 
tation from Ophelia's speech, Hamlet, iv. 5. 166, and the quotation 
43 : 9, "holds Nature more clever," from Gay's Epitaph of 
Byewords, illustrate Lamb's use of quotations, which generally 



1 86 Notes 

was not so much to point a moral as to preserve a happy turn of 
phrase. For this trait of them his quotations are well worth study ; 
but also his own skill in delicate and felicitous phrasing is very 
characteristic of his style. Note, fur instance, how delightfully, in 
the next two sentences, he carries out the suggestion expressed in 
"with a difference." — 16. Old Burton. Robert Burton (1577- 
1640), author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621 ; a 
quaint storehouse of odd facts, fancies, and quotations, illustrative 
especially of the sad and moody humours of the mind. The 
"strange contemporaries" (1. 17) here mentioned were representa- 
tive of the age in English literature when authors were especially 
given to curious conceits of thought and wording, such "out-of- 
the-way humours and opinions " (43 : 3) as attracted Lamb's 
fancy and moulded the "self pleasing quaintness " of his style. — 
43 : 10. Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne (i 605-1 682), a 
Norwich physician, written about 1635, ^^^ containing weighty and 
tolerant religious thought, but in the quaint vein, with its " beauti- 
ful obliquities," so congenial to Lamb. — 13. The intellectuals of 
. . . Margaret Newcastle. That Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, 
who in 1667 published a life of her husband, was a prime favourite 
with Lamb, is evident from the fact that he mentions her in terms 
of praise no fewer than four times in his essays ; but it is equally 
evident that he liked her for her eccentricities, or possibly for the 
untutored oddities of her language. In his essay on the Decay of 
Beggars he refers to her in order to quote from her the word ro- 
mancical. She might strike others very differently, as he intimates 
here, from the way she strikes him ; Pepys, in his Diary for March 
18, 1668, writes : "Stayed at home, reading the ridiculous History 
of my Lord Nexvcastle, wrote by his wife, which shows her to be a 
mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to 
write what she writes to him, and of him." With this contrast what 
Lamb says of the book in Detached Thoughts 07i Books and Read- 
ing ; see 121 : 3-6. 
44 : 7. With a gentle hand. Note how Lamb softens his Ian- 



Notes 187 

guage when he has anything derogatory or satirical to say; touch- 
ing the foible as lightly as he can, and supplying extenuations. 
Query : may not his use of the old-fashioned endings to his verbs 
Q' hafh an awkward trick," 1. 9; '■'■ passeth by the name," 1. 22; 
" niaketh matters worse," 45 : 10) be a means of softening his lan- 
guage and making it to a degree playful ? — "To let slip a word less 
seasonably," 1. 19, is a good example of his stating a fault 
delicately. 

44 : 22. Tumbled early . . . browsed at will. Do not miss 
the felicitous use of these metaphors. The "spacious closet" 
was the library of Samuel Salt, the employer of Charles Lamb's 
father, who gave the children the freedom of his library. 

45 : II. Divide your trouble. Probably a kind of play on 
Bacon's idea in his essay On Friendship, that friendship " redoubleth 
joys, and cutteth grief in halfs." — Note how, by the distinction 
suggested, this is made the occasion of making transition to the 
second half of the essay, the subject on which Lamb set out to 
write. 

45 : 18. Mackery End, and the occupants whom Lamb visited, 
are sufficiently described in the text. It was the name given to the 
several buildings of an estate, a mansion and outlying farm-houses. 
It was in the farm-house and among the common working people 
that Lamb visited. In this paragraph, with the exception of Bridget, 
Lamb uses real names and relationships. 

46 : 18. We had never forgotten. Lamb dwells with character- 
istic fondness on that period of childhood where memory begins, 
and on the later imagination which blends with memory. 

46:25. " Heart of June." Quoted from Ben Jonson. See above, 
note on 42:9. — 26. The stanza is from Wordsworth's Yarrow 
Visited. Of this stanza Lamb wrote to Wordsworth in 1815, — 
"than which I think no lovelier stanza can be found in the wide 
world of poetry." 

47 : I. Waking bliss, as contrasted with the half dreamy illusion 
of her brother, as described 46 : 20. The phrase is from Milton's 



1 88 Notes 

Comus. — 9. More pardonable . . . than decorous. Another 
instance of dehcate statement; compare note 44: 7. 

47 : 27. Those slender ties, etc. Note how well-worded and 
clean-cut is the contrast expressed in this sentence. — 48: 6. The 
two scriptural cousins. An allusion to Mary and EHzabeth; see 
Zz/i^ i. 36, 39, 40. — 25. Astonishment . . . astoundment. Does 
Lamb use these two words for different shades of meaning (and if 
so what difference can you make?), or merely for variety of 
wording? — 26. B. F. Barron Field, a friend of Lamb's, a man of 
letters, who, as the text intimates, removed from England to reside 
in Australia. He made this journey to Mackery End along with 
the Lambs, possibly cousin-hunting like them (compare the name 
Field, 46:4), though here he is spoken of as "almost the only 
thing that was not a cousin there." 

The last sentence of the essay may profitably be studied both for 
its very accurate description of a mental process, and for the skilful 
way in which it works up to a cadence, and ends with the title of 
the essay. 

MY FIRST PLAY 

Pages 50-56 

Like many of Lamb's essays, this is rambling and discursive in 
getting at its main point of interest; but it is rightly named, for 
evidently his main impulse to write the essay was to describe the 
interest and wonder of a child's mind, and its contrast with the 
more sophisticated mind of later life. In a less weighty and philo- 
sophical treatment the subject is similar to that of Wordsworth's 
well-known ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections 
of Early Childhood. Both describe the disillusion that comes in 
after years to dispel the glamour and pure imagination of childhood. 
It was a matter on which Lamb felt keenly; deprecating especially 
the dispelling of childhood illusions by prematurely explaining them 
away. In an early sketch on Play-House Memoranda, which is a 



Notes 189 

kind of preliminary sketch for this essay, he says : " We crush the 
faculty of delight and wonder in children, by explaining everything. 
We take them to the source of the Nile, and show them the scanty 
runnings, instead of letting the beginnings of that sevenfold stream 
remain in impenetrable darkness, a mysterious question of wonder- 
ment and delight to ages." 

50: I. A portal. Note how Lamb uses this solitary surviving 
relic of a long-demolished building to transport his reader into the 
thought and atmosphere of long ago, which then he concentrates 
on the event of his first visit to the theatre. So in the first short 
paragraph he sends the imagination back through forty years, and 
by one or two details sets it to thinking like a child. — 6. Old 
Drury — Garrick's Drury. Drury Lane theatre in its day was so 
prominent in London life that it is almost historic, and especially 
as connected with one of the most renowned of actors, David Gar- 
rick (17 1 6-1 779), whose career came in the times of the great 
eighteenth-century men of letters, Johnson, Burke, and Gold- 
smith. 

50: 21. Whose gait and bearing. The gait and bearing of 
these imitators of each other would be the most vivid memory in a 
child's mind. In his essay on Some of the Old Actors he says of 
this John Palmer : " In sock or buskin there was an air of swagger- 
ing gentility about Jack Palmer. He was z. gentleman with a slight 
vciivAxow oi the footman" — 51: I. Young Brinsley. /.,?. Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), the celebrated dramatist and man- 
ager, known to us as the author, among others, of two plays that 
still hold the stage. The Rivals and The School for Scandal. Of 
his matrimonial escapade, which occurred in 1773, sufficient is told 
here. — 9, Brinsley's easy autograph. An allusion to his debt- 
incurring proclivity, though in this case, by the facile way of paying 
his oil bills by theatre orders, he satisfied one admirer, who was 
willing thus to take his pay. 

51 : 18. Ciceronian. The word has become a synonym for a 
sonorous and some\^ hat artificial style of enunciation. Browning, 



190 Notes 

in The Bishop Orders His Tomb, uses Cicero (or rather his 
middle name, Tullius) as the norm of elegant and classical 
language — 

" Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word," 

— 52: I. The highest parochial honours, perhaps a church- 
warden of St. Andrew's, Holborn, a church still standing near Hol- 
born Viaduct. 

52 : 4. Little wondrous talismans ! Note how keenly Lamb 
enters, in every detail, into the remembered wonder and delight of 
the child mind. — 8. The only landed property, etc. Lamb is 
using real names and an authentic event of his life here, though it 
seems he inherited it rather from the widow than from Mr. Field 
himself. The " commodious mansion," on its three-quarters of an 
acre, was a thatched cottage; and the name which the property 
still bears, " Button Snap," is thought to have been bestowed by 
Lamb himself. 

53 : 6. But when we got in. From this phrase to the end of 
the paragraph is a kind of climax; note detail by detail the little 
things which add to the intensity of childish anticipation, until with 
the last sentence the culmination is reached. Note how the paren- 
thetical " I was not past six years old " is put in where it best en- 
hances the effect of the mental state he is describing. — 8. Endured. 
Note the choice of a word which intimates that the intense interest 
was almost pain; compare an expression of Wordsworth's, " aching 
joys." — 20. "Fair Auroras!" The phrase is quoted from one of 
the songs of this play of Artaxerxes. — 23. The maternal lap. 
This is said to be the only allusion to his mother that Lamb makes 
in his essays. It will be remembered that his sister Mary, who lived 
with him, had killed her mother in an attack of mania, and perhaps 
Lamb refrained from mentioning the mother out of regard for her 
feelings. — 25. Artaxerxes was an English opera by a distinguished 
English composer, Thomas Augustine Arne (i 710-1778). The only 
time when this opera and Garrick's pantomime of Harlequin'' s 



Notes 191 

Invasion were given together was December I, 1 780, which does 
not quite agree with the date given, 55 : 18. 

54 : 9. The burning idol, or perhaps illuminated idol, an as- 
sumed accompaniment of the ancient sun-worship of Persia — 
18. St. Denys, the patron saint of France, in the legend carried 
his head two miles after his decapitation. 

55 : 10. As good and authentic. Lamb probably refers here to 
what is the most powerful feature of Robinson Crusoe, its intense 
realism and verisimihtude, — 14. Grotesque Gothic heads. Lamb's 
interest is of course not in these but in that trait of young child- 
hood in which the wonder and novelty of the scene quite effaces 
the sense of the ridiculous. In a story which he wrote for Mrs. 
Leicester's School on First Going to Chtirch, Lamb mentions these 
same grotesque heads in the Temple church and the fact that in 
his childhood, as he saw them in a sacred edifice, he was not disposed 
to laugh at them. " I somehow fancied," he says, " they were the 
representation of wicked people set up as a warning." 

56 : 16. The alteration. Note the elaborate paradox in "those 
many centuries — of six short twelvemonths." This last paragraph 
is Lamb's way of describing the same change in mind and feelings, 
between youth and age, which Wordsworth describes in stanzas 
iv and v of his Immortality ode : — 

" Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? 



At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 

Lamb, however, who puts this disillusion somewhat early in youth, 
notes a third stage (lines 21-26), in which something of the old 
enjoyment of the drama comes back, but so that reason and im- 
agination are in wholesome balance. Throughout his life the 
theatre remained to Lamb "the most delightful of recreations." 



192 Notes 

BARBARA S 

Pages 57-64 

In May, 1825, Lamb wrote to Wordsworth : " In the London 
which is just out are 2 papers entitled The Superanmcated Man, 
which I wish you to see, and also ist Apr., a little thing called 

Barbara S , a story gleaned from Miss Kelly." The Miss 

Kelly here mentioned was Frances Maria Kelly, or Fanny Kelly 
as she was called, a favourite actress of Lamb's time; and the 
main incident of the story was an experience of her own childhood. 
In a letter M'ritten in 1875 •'^''^^ Kelly retells the story, and re- 
ferring to Lamb's version of it, speaks of " the extraordinary skill 
with which he has, in the construction of his story, desired and 
contrived so to mystify and characterize the events, as to keep me 
out of sight, and render it utterly impossible for any one to guess 
at me as the original heroine." Lamb indeed takes liberties with 
some details; not, however, to mystify but to heighten the effect 
of his reading of the case. It was as a study in the innocence and 
trueheartedness of child character that the incident interested 
him, and it is to enhance these traits that he colours and modifies 
it. In other words (speaking in literary terms), it was for its de- 
scriptive value rather than for its narrative, that he wrote the story 
as he did. 

A special interest attaches to Miss Kelly, the original of Barbara 

S , from the fact that in 181 9, when Lamb was forty-four and 

she fifteen years younger, he offered her his hand in marriage; but 
when she, on the ground of " an early and deeply rooted attach- 
ment," refused the offer, he relinquished his one dream of wedded 
life, and their relations, which were always friendly, continued as 
before. She died unmarried at the age of ninety-two ; he at the 
age of fifty-nine. For his lifelong relinquishment of marriage 
(except for this one day's romance), and its cause, see Introduc- 
tion, p. 17. 



Notes 193 

It is to be noted, however, that Lamb (or rather James Elia) 
does not use real names in this essay; and in fact attributes the 
source of the story to quite another person; see 64 : 10. 

57 : 3. Ascended the long rambling staircase. It will be 
well to note the very leisurely way in which Lamb tells what story 
there is ("Indeed I have little or none to tell" — he says, 58:23). 
We can hardly call his manner, however, spinning it out, because 
the numerous details and digressions are put in to enhance the 
effect he really has at heart. Note how in this first paragraph he 
begins with a single narrative act, the rest serving merely to sketch 
what we may call the situation; then all is digression (the reader 
being once definitely put off, 58 : 23) until the same act is repeated, 
60:16, and yet again, after more digression, 61:19. Yet these 
loiterings are pertinent to the writer's object; a profitable study 
would be to inquire how. 

57 : 15. Pious application of her small earnings. The word 
pious is used in the older sense, like the classical {Q.g. pitis yEneas, 
Virgil), i.e. due reverence or respect to others. This trait of Bar- 
bara's plays a prominent part in Lamb's portrayal of her character; 
see 60 : 19-61 : 6. Here it is used to bring out another trait; note 
what it is. 

57 : 24. She had already, etc. Some standard child's parts, 
from Shakespeare's King John and Richard III,, are mentioned 
here, in the order in which they would be taken by a child gradu- 
ally growing to older roles. 

58 : 21. Indian rubber, or a pumice-stone, as eraser or cleanser; 
referring to what has been said in 1, 16. 

59 : 14. The part of the Little Son. This will do for a remark 
in which Elia, according to his wont, is free to disguise things at 
his will; as a matter of fact, however. Miss Kelly, as related in 
Crabb Robinson's Diary, tells the incident of herself, when, as a 
child, she was acting the part of Arthur in King John, to Mrs. Sid- 
dons's Constance. 

59 : 25. An impediment in my speech. This, which was a fact 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 1 3 



194 Notes 



of Lamb's life, has been mentioned in the Introduction as a dis- 
qualification which in his school life kept Lamb from being a Gre- 
cian, and so virtually a candidate for the university and a learned 
profession. — 60 :i. Miss Kelly. Lamb's skilful mystification of 
facts is notevi^orthy here, as this person is the very original of 

Barbara S . Socially, he and his sister Mary M^ere much more 

intimate with her than these words would indicate, and as dramatic 
critic Lamb wrote much in praise of her acting, and addressed two 
sonnets to her. In one of his letters he speaks of her " divine plain 
face." — 15. But I am growing a coxcomb. Why ? Note that in 
the foregoing paragraph it is Elia speaking ; Charles Lamb, though 
fond of the society of actors, would not make it so much a matter 
of pride to be admitted to their distinguished attentions. 

60 : 16. As I was about to say. Lamb comes for a moment 
within hailing distance of his story again ; compare note on 57 : 3. 
Has his long digression contributed anything to our better apprecia- 
tion of Barbara S ? 

60 : 21. From causes which, etc. Read the sentence carefully 
and see if you can tell what the causes were which he would not 
"arraign." Does he slyly reveal a hint of them in 1. 25? 

61 : 7. Some child's part. The part in which the roast fowl 
incident occurs is in the play. The Children in the Wood, in which 
Miss Kelly played, though at the time of this story Morton's play of 
that name "as yet . . . was not"; see 58: 4. — 7-18. Note, from 
the two contrasted parentheses in this paragraph how keen is 
Lamb's sympathy with the nature of a child's mind. 

61 : 19. The little starved, meritorious maid. Are the two 
adjectives that Lamb uses here his way of summarizing the effect of 
the three previous paragraphs, so that we may have it in mind and 
appreciate the main incident more keenly ? Note how they cor- 
respond to the paragraphs respectively. 

62 : 5. An unusual weight of metal. This detail of the story 
is Lamb's invention, put in apparently to emphasize the small experi- 
ence she had had with coin, so that anything unusual was the more 



Notes 195 

perceptible. In the version that Miss Kelly gives, she receives a 
bank-note ; and, as she represents, was not so " untaught or 

innocent " as Lamb makes out Barbara S to be, but, taking 

nothing for granted, unfolded it and discovered the mistake at the 
first convenient stopping-place. 

62 : 7. Mark the dilemma. The best way to mark the dilemma, 
that is, as Lamb means it, the conflict of emotions between being 
honest and keeping the money, is, to note how this next paragraph 
prepares for and accentuates it, and then, in the long paragraph 
following, the considerations back and forth, like a kind of inner 
dialogue, until virtue, " that never-failing friend did ste^ in." 

62 : II. Porticoes of moral philosophy. The moral philosophy 
of Athens, especially of the Stoics, was taught in an open air porch 
or portico, hence the association of a portico with philosophy. 

63 : 29. She knew the quality of honesty. For this phrase 
Lamb is probably thinking of Shakespeare's "the quality of mercy," 
in The Merchant of Venice iv. i. 184. — At this point think back 
over the whole story, and see if these words do not mark the 
lesson or truth for which the writer has throughout been accumu- 
lating interest. It is all the skilful portrayal of a state of mind, 
and of a type of character, in which evidently he has intense interest. 

64 : II. The late Mrs. Crawford. In the opening note we 
have seen, from Lamb's own words, that he had the story from 
Miss Kelly ; but we may remind ourselves again that, writing as 
James Elia, he can make his names and facts as fictitious as is his 
own assumed name. The Mrs. Crawford here mentioned was, 
indeed, a well-known actress of the day, and the facts he gives in 
the foot-note are true ; but choosing to ascribe the story to her 
instead of to Miss Kelly, he speaks of one who is no longer living 
to prove or disprove it, or to have her personal experiences exposed. 



196 Notes 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

Pages 65-76 

Though not actually the first written, this was the first essay 
published under the name Elia, and designed to head the series. 
One feels the writer's sense of this fact to some extent in the style 
of it. Not that the style is exactly stiff; but it reads a little 
self-conscious, as if the writer were minded to impress a definite 
stamp of style and treatment on a new venture in literature. 
Perhaps his ostentatious use of the thou style adds to this effect; 
and his remark about how he has been using names, 76 : 23, 
is in the same vein, hinting at the treatment of facts he is adopting. 

After leaving school. Lamb, in 1 791, was a clerk for a while in 
the South-Sea House (see Introduction) ; so in this essay, which 
professes to date from forty years after (68 : 16) — though as a 
matter of fact it was only thirty-one — Lamb is giving impressions 
received in his seventeenth year and recorded in his forty-fourth. 
These remembered impressions, however, are not boyish; they , 
give such things as a matured man would observe and put into 
delicate and masterly description. It is this descriptive effect that 
he is seeking to convey. The business of the South-Sea House 
was just the feeble survival of a financial scheme started in 1711; 
which scheme became prodigiously popular, investors speculating 
in its stocks and forcing them upward, until when they had reached 
the quotation of 1000, in 1720, the chairman and principal directors 
sold out, and suddenly the whole enterprise collapsed. The thing 
has become historic under the name of the South-Sea Bubble, 
sometimes the South-Sea Hoax. Macaulay, in his essay on William 
Pitt, has some sentences describing vividly the height of the craze 
and the frenzy produced by the crash. What Lamb is describing 
in our essay is the state of the business as it was seventy years after 
the failure; it is a description therefore of hopeless decay and 
increasing desolation, with which the whole aspect of the building 



Notes 197 

and the character of the clerks are in keeping. The atmosphere 
of ruin, we may say, pervades the essay; this was Lamb's design. 
At the opening of the next essay (see p. 77), Lamb thus gives 
it : " In my last I tried to divert thee with some half- forgotten 
humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, 
long since gone to decay." 

65 : I. Thy . . . thou. In this his first Elia essay. Lamb seems 
to adopt this older style of address as a delicate intimation to his 
reader that this is a friendly and intimate conversational essay, 
rather than a piece of formal information; the old form of the 
pronoun like the address to familiar friends, as the Germans use the 
pronoun dti. — 3. The Flower Pot. An inn in Bishopsgate 
Street, from which stages for the north of London started. — 
6. A melancholy looking, etc. Note how this compendious 
description of the building strikes the key-note, as it were, of the 
essay; suggesting for it a kind of atmosphere of desolation; com- 
pare the opening note. Note how all the details of the succeeding 
paragraph are evidently chosen to enhance this feeling of deserted- 
ness and decay. 

66: II. An "unsunned heap," etc. The connection of these 
hidden hoards with Mammon is a suggestion from Spenser, but the 
phrase is from Milton's Conius, 1. 398 : — 

" You may as well spread out the unsimned heaps 
Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den." 

— 14. Of that famous Bubble. The South-Sea Bubble, and the 
South-Sea Hoax (see the word in capitals, 67:5), are the names 
by which the celebrated South-Sea scheme, which is typical of wild 
financial speculation, has passed into history; compare the opening 
note. 

66 : 21. Stagnates upon it. From this and the preceding sen- 
tences reproduce in your mind the figure that makes this word 
fitting. — 67: 9. Vaux's superhuman plot. Lamb here uses the 
spelling Vaux, as if the man were French, though Guy Fawkes, the 



igS Notes 

originator of the famous Gunpowder Plot, was an Englishman. It 
was a plot to stow powder under the Houses of Parliament and blow 
them up while King, Ministers, Lords, and Commons were there, 
and by that means secure occasion to restore Roman Catholicism in 
England. This was in the time of James I., and the date set for it 
was November 5, 1605. The plot was discovered just in time; and 
in gratitude for their providential escape Parliament set apart 
November 5 as a day of national thanksgiving. This tremendous 
plot ranks in history by the side of the South-Sea craze, as an 
event of "Titan size." 

67 : 25. Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. Speak- 
ing as Elia, in this and the succeeding sentence. Lamb can repre- 
sent himself as he will; as Charles Lamb, however, he was an ac- 
countant all his days, and presumably had an accountant's skill in 
figuring. But these remarks of his are not false, for they are his 
indirect way of intimating that his life's interests are not in prosaic 
details of business, but in something else; see Introduction, pp. 
II, 12. Lamb's choice of subject for this first Elia essay is very 
significant. He has to live among the dry routines of accounts, 
perhaps irksome and distasteful to him; and yet he chooses for 
subject a noted house of business, as if he were going to write its 
history. Instead of this, however, he transmutes its dull associations 
into imagination and poetry. He uses the suggestiveness of history 
and age and decay to give a poetic glamour to it. Read this para- 
graph through and note that every detail is in keeping not with an 
informational, but with an essentially poetic realization of his sub- 
ject. Lamb's love of the past, too, with its power on the imagina- 
tion, is very palpable here. — 68 : 8. Some better library. Has 
Lamb the thought of a library belonging to a higher state of 
existence, as it were in Elysium? 

68 : 18. They partook of the genius of the place ! This re- 
mark furnishes a key to the exquisite descriptions of personal 
character which follow, and should be borne in mind in reading 
them. These clerks present various phases of a kind of left-over, 



Notes 199 

derelict type of man, stranded as it were in this decayed place of 
business. 

69 : 7. Hence they formed, etc. Note that the succeeding 
sentences are without verbs, and yet separated from each other by 
periods. This manner of punctuating is a delicate aid to the de- 
scription, giving as it does details each of which is complete in 
itself. A contrasted way of describing, by the use of the dash, may 
be noted in the opening paragraph of Poor Relations, p. 87. 
— II. Not a few among them, etc. What is the effect of this 
last detail, in its relation to those that precede? Name the figure 
it exemplifies. 

69 : 13. A Cambro-Briton, that is, a Welshman. Cambria was 
the Latin name, which survived as the poetic name, of Wales. — 
The names of clerks which Lamb gives in this essay are real ; 
whether their characters are to life or invented we do not know. — 
20. As a gib-cat, or as we should say, a tom-cat. Lamb gets 
his phrase from Falstaff ; see First Henry IV., i. 2. 76. — 
24. Haunted, . . . with the idea, etc It will be noted that Lamb's 
chief interest is in describing minutely individualized character, 
and especially delicate, as it were instinctive, states of mind. In 
an earlier essay, entitled. The Last Peach, he describes the morbid 
impulse of kleptomania, and it is this at M'hich he hints here. In 
The Superannuated Man (see p. 168) he describes in a 
similar way the accountant's dread of making false entries or errors 
in computing. — 70 : lo. Then was his forte. It will help our 
study of these descriptions of character to note that nearly all are 
represented as living a kind of double life, as if they were one man 
in relation to business and another in their inner selves. These 
sides of their character were contrasted but not incompatible ; 
they blend in one personality. — 12. His countryman, Pennant. 
Thomas Pennant (1726 -1798), a somewhat noted Welsh anti- 
quary. — 20. The worthy descendants, etc. The reference is to 
the Huguenot refugees, mostly artisans of various trades, who were 
expelled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 



200 Notes 

1.685, ^^^ who, though so sterling a folk, were forced from extreme 
poverty to live in squalid conditions, 

70 : 26. The air and stoop of a nobleman. The succeeding 
paragraph, down to " the secret of Thomas's stoop," 71 : 19, is 
worth careful study as a delicate analysis of a trait of character, its 
inner cause and its external effect in manner. — 71 : 8. Original 
state of white paper. The Latin phrase tabula rasa, which was 
perhaps in Lamb's mind, is often used to describe this kind of in- 
nocent vacuity, intellectual or moral. — 23. To you instead of 
riches, etc. Note here, as you will have occasion to note fre- 
quently, how tolerant and sympathetic are Lamb's judgements of 
people ; he always leaves us with a good feeling towards them. 
In this he was unconsciously portraying himself; see Introduction^ 
p. 18. 

72: 3. Thought an accountant, etc. Lamb here adapts a 
passage from Fielding's Joseph Andrexvs ; the original remarks 
being applied to schoolmasters. In quite similar way he has 
adapted a passage from Thomas Fuller in the essay on Christ^s 
Hospital; see 39:25. — 12. I know not who, etc. Lamb's 
fondness for a little harmless mystification comes out here and in 
the foot-note, which was appended to the magazine article instead 
of the parenthesis. The "Mr. Lamb" here mentioned was his 
brother, John Lamb, who succeeded Tipp as accountant about 1806. 
He is spoken of by Elia as if he were a stranger. — 16. First and 
second violoncellos, etc. Lamb's list of instruments may be ac- 
cumulated whimsically, or it may reflect the absurd idea of the 
make-up of an orchestra which most literary men seem to have. 
— 18, Like Lord Midas. It was Midas, King of Phrygia, whose 
ears were changed to those of an ass for passing a musical judge- 
ment that displeased Apollo. — 73 : 18. His life was formal. In 
Tipp Lamb is portraying a man whose congenial element was the 
counting-room and its occupations ; on the others the clerkship 
seems to sit less naturally. Music was merely his hobby, 72 : 5, 
not, as was Lamb's literature, his relief from prosaism. — 27. Used 



Notes 20I 

to give it a worse name. What this name was Lamb divulges, 
74 : 3, but characteristically of his tolerant heart, only to describe 
the justifiable side of the quality. The whole description of this 
untoward trait of Tipp's, beginning with " a sort of timidity," 1. 26, 
is a good example of softened statement ; compare note on 44 : 
7. — 74 : 14. Neither was it recorded of him, etc. To put this 
as the last detail, after such a list as is given in the preceding part 
of the sentence, and thus in one sudden turn to give a grandly re- 
deeming feature by which we are to remember Tipp, — is it not a' 
masterly stroke? He has left the hint open for it in 1. 4. 

75 : 5. Such small politics. A fair summary of the essentially 
light-minded, not to say frivolous character of the man's literary work : 
*' terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive," — " some quirk that left a 
sting"; and yet occupied with the small-talk of thought and events. 

75 : 9. A little of the sinister bend. The heraldic indication 
of illegitimacy. Though this is expressed in softened terms. Lamb 
seemed to have been mistaken both about this (Richard) Plumer 
and " his reputed author," old Walter Plumer. It was in the 
Plumer mansion in Blakesware that Lamb's grandmother Field 
was housekeeper; see Dream-Children ; A Reverie, p. 160. The 
mansion is described in the essay on Blakesj?ioor in H — shire. 

— 21. Johnson's Life of Cave. A memoir of Edward Cave, pub- 
lisher of the Gentleman'' s Magazine, which Dr. Johnson wrote on 
the occasion of his death in 1754. Lamb, it may be noted, quotes 
this case inaccurately, not as a wilful error, but in mere mistake. 

76 : 2. That song sung by Amiens. As You Like it, ii. 7. 174. 
The sentiment of the song is reported instead of quoted : — 

" Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
Thou art not so unkind 
As man's ingratitude." 

— 9. Mild, conciliatory, swan-like, this last epithet, which alludes 
to the proverbial swan's singing at its death, is fitted to the thought 
of his untimely ending; Lamb's memorandum is, " Maynard, hang'd 
himself." 



202 Notes 

76: 22. What if I have been playing with thee. In this 

final address to his reader warning the latter not to take him too 
seriously, Lucas thinks that " Lamb may suddenly have felt the 
misgiving that he had told too much, and therefore invented this 
sudden cross trail." I think rather that here at the close of his first 
Elia essay Lamb is taking occasion to hint at his literary procedure. 
The essay is not a piece of information, from v^hich the reader may 
know the lives of Evans and Tame and Tipp and the rest, or the 
history of the South-Sea House; it is a literary study of types of 
character and a scene of melancholy decay, — a poetic inven- 
tion, from which the reader must not expect to extract a certifiable 
residuum of fact. He has used real names; but he seeks to throw 
uncertainty even upon these, by comparing them to the names of 
old comrades which Christopher Sly recalled, in the Induction to 
the Taming of the Shrew, 2. 95, 96, when his companions are 
trying to persuade him that his drunken sleep has lasted fifteen 
years, and that no such persons ever existed. Something answering 
to these reminiscences has existed in actual fact; but the past has 
thrown its glamour over them; and their real value is in what they 
have for the soul. 

OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

Pages 77-86. 

In the previous essay, which is the first of the Elia papers, we 
read between the lines some hints of the kind of treatment we 
might expect in the series, — a treatment not matter of fact and in- 
formative, but discursive, imaginative, essentially poetical. In the 
present essay. Lamb hints at the character we are to think of in 
their creator: who this Elia is, through whose mind we are to look 
at life, and in whose tastes and sympathies we are to share. Thus 
the two essays together, like a kind of introduction to the Elia 
series, reveal in Lamb's delicate literary idiom, what we have noted 
in the first two sections of the /«/r^£/2^<:^/<?;?; his life and livelihood 



Notes 203 



on the one hand, that of a clerk in the most prosaic task-work, and 
on the other hand, where his Hfe's real interests lay — the inner 
world of the heart and the imagination, of thought and meditation, 
of which Oxford with its associations may be taken as the symbol. 

It is worth noting, too, that just as, in order to transfigure the 
routine life that he has to live, he chooses to describe a mercantile 
house in which the real business is moribund or dead, so, in order 
to describe the kind of life that is most congenial to him and to 
which he gravitates, he chooses Oxford not in the full tide of 
university pursuits but in the vacation, when students and teachers 
are away and there is nothing left but the spirit of the place. It is 
the Oxford of his longings and his imagination that he describes. 

It is thought that the impressions recorded in this essay were 
really gathered from a visit to Cambridge, and attributed to Oxford 
by Lamb's peculiar fancy for mystification. In 181 9, a year before 
this essay was published in the London Magazine, he wrote at Cam- 
bridge a sonnet, of which in several ways this essay may be regarded 
as an expansion : — 

" I was not train'd in Academic bowers. 
And to those learned streams I nothing owe 
Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; 
Mine have been anything but studious hours. 
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, 
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; 
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, 
And I waWi gowned ; feel unusual powers. 
Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, 
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ; 
And my skull teems with notions infinite. 
Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 
Truths, which transcend the scorching Schoolmen's vein, 
And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite ! " 

In this sonnet he, a non-studious layman, feels the stimulus of 
academic thought, while in the essay he feels more the soothing 



204 Notes 



restfulness of academic leisure. Tliere is no suggestion of the hard 
study which is associated with school and university life; but the 
essay is full of the atmosphere of learning, the habitual thinking 
of high things, which to a clerk on his vacation would be like im- 
mersion in another world. 

77 : I. Casting a preparatory glance. This opening sentence 
is a good one to study for its grammatical structure. Note that the 
subject of this participle is clearly expressed, and yet it is not em- 
phasized either by prominent grammatical relation or by position 
in the clause. Note also how much parenthetical matter there is, 
and how he marks a parenthesis zvithin a parenthesis by another 
manner of sign. — 5. A Vivares, or a WooUet, eminent en- 
gravers, one a Frenchman, the other an Englishman, the men's 
names used for their work. 

77 : II. The self-same college. The word college is here used 
in the more general sense of collection, or order of people. — 
13. Through a quill. It may not be superfluous to note that 
Lamb's fantastic figure is built on the custom, universal in his day, 
of writing with quill pens, — now a nearly lost art. 

77 : 15. It is my humour, my fancy. Note how, speaking as 
Elia, Lamb inverts the relative significance of his work. Assuming 
to be primarily a man of letters (1. 16), he treats the laborious 
task -work of his clerk's life as if it were recreation, and as if it 
made the literary life itself easier and more zestful. This is not 
wholly a whimsey of Lamb's; that there is something in it may be 
seen by the way in which Lamb's literary interests waned after, 
as a "superannuated man," he had all his time to himself; see 
pp. 173-176. In a similar way, in the essay on Old China, he 
makes Bridget Elia dwell on the greater zest in life and literature 
caused by the pinch of poverty; see p. iii ff. The passage 
before us, if humorously ironical, yet reveals Lamb's disposition 
to make the best of a very monotonous and prosaic occupation. — 
78 : 4. Essays. I^amb italicizes this word to intimate that these 
very essays of Elia are written in the bits of time rescued from his 



Notes 205 



habitual occupation, and, as he puts it, enriched by his commercial 
recreations. 

78 : 15. Certain flaws ... in this Joseph's vest. The allu- 
sion, which is to Joseph's " coat of many colours," Genesis xxxvii. 3, 
derives its force from the fact that the coat was the mark of his 
father's special favour. He is still in the ironical assumption that 
the accountant's work was a recreatory favour granted by the em- 
ployers, a kind of opportunity, which it takes a "cunning carper" 
to find less than perfect. — 20. Red-letter days. So called because, 
being days devoted to the more important saints, they were marked 
in the Prayer Book calendar by a red letter, had parts of the service 
especially devoted to them, and were observed accordingly as holi- 
days. The number of these holidays during the year, as granted 
by the India House, was in 1820 reduced, so that from a consid- 
erable number the accountants were granted only five. It is this 
reduction that is here referred to as matter for regret. — 23. Andrew 
and John, etc. The names he gives here are, of course, the names 
of the more prominent saints. The poetic line here quoted seems 
to be an adaptation of Milton, Paradise Regained, ii. 7 : — 

"Andrew and Simon, famous after known." 

— 25. As I was at school at Christ's. The whole-day -leaves 
mentioned on 24 : i, were given on these red-letter saints' days. 

— 26. The old Baskett Prayer Book. A standard edition of the 
Prayer Book named from its printers, the eldest of whom, John 
Baskett, died in 1742. Lamb launches here into one of his favourite 
moods of reminiscence, recalling things that were particularly 
vivid to his childish imagination. — 27. Uneasy posture refers to 
the crucifixion of Peter, which tradition says was head downward. 
St. Bartholomew, or " holy Bartlemy," was martyred by flaying 
alive. — 79 : 2. Iscariot is, of course, Judas Iscariot, to whom the 
" better Jude," two lines below, is contrasted. — 4. Better Jude. 
This Judas (not Iscariot, John xiv. 22) shared the same day with 
Simon ; hence Lamb's regretful remark at one holiday the few-er. 



2o6 Notes 

— 6. Gaudy-day. Does Lamb use this epithet in allusion to its 
being marked by a red letter ? 

79 : 9. "Far off their coming shone." Lamb here adapts 
Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 768: "Far off his coming shone; " said 
of the Son of God. The quotation enhances the reader's feeling 
of the eagerness with which hohdays were anticipated, — a little 
inconsistent this, with Lamb's ironical praise of his work in a pre- 
vious paragraph. — 16. These holy tides. The old word for times ; 
obsolete now except in composition in such words as "spring-tide," 
"Christmas-tide," "Whitsuntide." This remark of Lamb's about 
judging their further observance to be superstition, refers to the 
abolition of them mentioned on 78 : 17. — 21. No Selden, nor 
Archbishop Usher. The mention of these names serves a double 
purpose : to identify these questions of ecclesiastical seasons with 
two great clerics and scholars whose distinction was to have been 
authorities in just such things; and to make transition to the sub- 
ject of the present essay, Oxford in the Vacation. Note how skil- 
fully this latter is done. — 24. The mighty Bodley. Sir Thomas 
Bodley (i 545-161 3), founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, 
where Elia represents himself as writing. 

79 : 25. Enact the student. Not be, but play, the student; he 
who had been " defrauded in his young years " of a university career. 

In Barbara S (see 59 : 25 f.) he mentions an impediment 

in speech which kept him from the pulpit and the actor's profession. 
It kept him also from becoming a Grecian at school (cf. 37 : 25 f.), 
which distinction generally carried with it a university course. So 
the clerk EHa is giving faithfully the feelings of Charles Lamb, as 
he visits the academic halls which he could not attend as student. 

— Note the climax with which, in the course of the paragraph, he 
passes through the different grades, — sizar, servitor, gentleman- 
commoner, master of arts, culminating in the quadrangle of Christ 
church, which is the largest and most imposing college in Oxford, 
and in seraphic Doctor (Doctor Seraphicus was the name given in 
the Middle Ages to St. Bonaventura, on account of the spiritual 



Notes 207 



beauty and fervency of his style), which is evidently intended to be 
the very culmination of learned distinction. 

81 : 2. Have cooked for Chaucer. It is not known whether 
Chaucer ever attended a university; but he is mentioned here 
mainly to emphasize the age of the college kitchen furniture. 

81 : 25. What a place to be in. Here Lamb falls into the 
same fanciful vein as in his meditations on the South-Sea House; 
read by the side of this paragraph the paragraph on p. 67. Both 
passages testify to his intense love of the past, and especially of the 
dead past, only the spirit, the poetical essence of which, remains. 
Note how, in accordance with this, he is not here to read the books 
or even to open them, nor to search into the MSS., but to " inhale 
learning " as if it were an odour. — 82 : 8. Those sciential apples. 
An allusion to the fruit of the tree of knowledge (the word sciential 
is intended to express merely the idea of scientia, knowledge), 
"amid the happy orchard," i.e. the Garden of Eden; see Genesis 
ii. 17; iii. 2. 

82 : II. Do but disturb and unsettle my faith. Lamb here 
continues his description of the aspect of learning that appeals to 
him, — the spirit of it rather than the letter. Various readings in 
manuscripts, which imply imperfection, are not to his taste. He 
would rather think that what the revered old authors wrote they 
wrote once for- all, and perfectly. The "credit of the three wit- 
nesses," which he mentions to illustrate his sentiment, is an allusion 
to I John V. 7, "There are three that bear record in heaven," etc., 
which verse (omitted in the Revised Version) was in Lamb's time 
under vigorous discussion, and conclusively proved, especially by 
the great scholar Richard Porson, to be a spurious later addition. 
Such an upturning of venerable ideas was a disturbance to Lamb. 
He appended here, in \\\&- London Magazine, the following note: 
"There is something to me repugnant, at any time, in written hand. 
The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought 
of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty — as springing up with all 
its parts absolute — till, in evil hour, I was shown the original 



2.o8 Notes 

written copy of it, together with the other minor poems of its 
author, in the Library of Trinity, kept Hke some treasure to be 
proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them 
after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it 
staggered me to see the fine things in their ore ! interlined, cor- 
rected ! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at 
pleasure ! as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good ! 
as if inspirations were made up of parts, and those fluctuating, 
successive, indifferent ! I will never go into the workshop of any 
great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture, till it is fairly 
off the easel; no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and paint- 
ing another Galatea." — 14. And to G. D. George Dyer (1755- 
1841), a personal friend of Lamb's, an earlier graduate of Christ's 
and a Grecian, whom he here sets by the side of the famous scholar 
Porson, and, devoting all the rest of the essay to him, describes as 
a typical book-worm, the congenial inraate of such a place of 
"mouldering learning" (81 : 23) as this old library. It will be 
worth while, in reading these coming paragraphs, to note how 
exquisitely the character and occupation of the man are made to fit 
the place. — 16. A nook at Oriel, one of the older colleges in Ox- 
ford, in whose library the book-worm would be especially at home. — 
19. To new-coat him in Russia, as if he were himself a book to 
be rebound. — 20. A tall Scapula. Johann Scapula's Greek Lex- 
icon, type of a particularly dry and erudite book; and a tall, i.e. 
wide-margined copy, such as book-fanciers especially value. 

82 : 24. Like a dove on the asp's nest. Lamb here indulges 
in one of his favourite contrasts ; a man whose every thought is pure 
abstract learning, residing in Clifford's Inn, a place devoted to 
what Lamb calls "vermin of the law." Note how "fangs of the 
law" is chosen with reference to the figure which governs the pas- 
sage. — 27. " In calm and sinless peace." The phrase is quoted 
from Milton, Paradise Regained, iv. 425. 

83 : 12. These liberal pursuits. With all his admiration for G. 
D.'s scholarly tastes, it may be noted that Lamb attributes to him, 



Notes 209 

in his work on old college charters, the making of just the kind of 
things which he would call *' books that are no books " ; cf. 
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading, 118 : 19 ff. His admira- 
tion for his studious friend is much hke Browning's admiration for 
the grammarian in his poem A Grammarian^ s Funeral. — 17. Alma 
Maters. Lamb anglicizes these words, instead of retaining the 
Latin form almce viatres ; note, too, by the figurative language of 
the sentence, how vividly he personifies and thus makes alive an 
expression that has become quite dulled to college students. 

84 : 3. The most absent of men, i.e, absent-minded. Dyer, on 
account of his eccentricities, was a man whom Lamb and all his 
friends at once loved sincerely and laughed at. The story here 
given illustrates his absent-mindedness ; another story also, to the 
same effect, introduces another one of Lamb's essays. Amicus Redi- 
vivus, which is entirely founded on a mishap of Dyer's. The essay 
begins : " I do not know when I have experienced a stranger sen- 
sation, than on seeing my old friend G. D., who had been paying 
me a morning visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Islington, 
upon taking leave, instead of turning down the right-hand path by 
which he had entered — with staff in hand, and at noonday, deliber- 
ately march right forwards into the midst of the stream that runs by 
us, and totally disappear ; " — and whimsically chooses for motto the 
Miltonic lines, Lycidas,\. 50-51 : — 

" Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? " 

— 4. Our friend M.'s. Basil Montagu, Q.C. (1770-185 1), a lawyer, 
philanthropist, and man of letters, one of the circle of friends which 
included Lamb, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. — 14. Like a Queen 
Lar. A being created by Lamb from the Roman household deities, 
the Lares and Penates. — With pretty A. S. A Miss Anne Skep- 
per, afterwards Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter. — 22. Like another 
Sosia. A character, or rather two characters, just alike, in 
Plautus's comedy Amphitruo, a comedy of errors. 

ESSAYS OF ELI A — 1 4 



2IO Notes 

84:27. (Not to speak it profanely). Lamb puts in the saving 
parenthesis because he is quoting, in a semi-humorous spirit, a very- 
sacred passage of Scripture ; see 2 Corijithians \ .%. — 85 : 2. Starts 
like a thing surprised. Here Lamb, as vsras not infrequently the 
case, fuses together two quotations into one : Wordsworth in Inti- 
mations of Immortality, stanza ix, has 

" Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised ; " 
and Shakespeare, in Hajulet, i. i. 148, has 

" Started like a guilty thing." 

— 7. To be done to thee thyself. Note a thing quite like what 
was noted in the South-Sea House essay (see 74 : 14 and note)j 
that Lamb dismisses the friends he describes with a turn of lauda- 
tion, and for even their failings and absurdities has a converse of 
ample extenuation. We have been laughing at G. D. in the early 
part of the paragraph ; here we can only accord him reverence and 
respect. 

85 : 10. D. commenced life, etc. The succeeding two para- 
graphs, which describe D.'s personal peculiarities and especially 
privations, were deemed by a certain W. K. too personal, and ac- 
cordingly were omitted from the book edition. To W. K.'s 
criticism Lamb gave as his reason for writing in this strain of a 
fiiend he so highly honoured, that " it was only from the conviction 
that the public, in living subjects especially, do not endure pure 
panegyric." This gives Lamb's idea of literary effect and shading; 
whether it is open to criticism as calculated to wound sensibilities, 
the reader may judge. — 25. Agar's wish. See Proverbs xxx. 8. 
The scripture form of the name is Agur; it, has been suggested 
that in using this form Lamb perpetuates a mistake of Defoe's; 
possibly he used the form by preference. 

86 : 2. Wasting his fine erudition. In the succeeding descrip- 
tion of G. D.'s kind of M^ork Lamb gives a masterly description of 
the literary hack, such as in England is associated with the name 



Notes - 211 

Grub Street; but at the same time does justice to his solid and 
valuable services to literature and learning. See note, 83 : 12. 

86 : 25. The waters of Damascus. A rather crooked reference 
to Naaman's remonstrance, 2 Kings v. 12, "Are not Abana and 
Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? " 
— 26 f. The Shepherds . . . the Delectable Mountains . . . the 
Interpreter . . . the House Beautiful, are persons and scenes 
from The Pilgrim'' s Progress. 

POOR RELATIONS 
Pages 87-96 

The essays thus far read have been to a large extent autobio- 
graphical; that is, beginning with scenes and experiences of child- 
hood, they have conducted us through Lamb's schooling and sub- 
sequent entrance upon his clerkship ; until in Oxford in the Vacation 
we see Elia as a clerk gravitating as if by irresistible nature to the 
scenes of learning and scholarly contemplation which were Lamb's 
true element. With the present essay, as mentioned in the Intro- 
duction (see p. 19), begins a series of papers, selections VII 
to XIII, which *' form a somewhat like-minded group, giving a 
kind of description of Lamb's ruling tastes and sympathies." All 
of them are notable, among other things, for the extraordinary 
delicacy of portraiture, especially of the finer shadings of tastes, 
sympathies, character. 

The present essay is notable, especially in the first three para- 
graphs, for the lightness of its touch. Every sentence needs to be 
read not only for what it says but for the delicate allusion or antithe- 
sis or insinuation that it contains. This is materially aided by 
the peculiar punctuation that Lamb employs, notably his copious 
use of the dash, which conveys a fine shade of meaning well worth 
studying out. 

87 : I. A Poor Relation — is, etc. Note that this whole para- 
graph is punctuated wholly by the dash and comma, and consists 



212 • Notes 

merely of the grammatical subject and a long series of predicates. 
This first dash (without comma) simply sets them off by themselves. 
Some more modern editions, thinking to improve on Lamb's way of 
Meriting, remove these dashes, leaving only the commas; but this 
(as you can see by trying it) would only make the predicates a 
catalogue of things, which is just what Lamb would avoid. They 
do not accumulate traits of the Poor Relation; they simply give 
detached, as it were casual touches, each containing some felicitous 
description. — The most irrelevant thing in nature. This de- 
scription is inclusive, giving the key to all the rest. Note how each 
predicate contains some incongruity of terms, or irrelevancy, some 
conjunction of things that do not naturally go together. — 8. A re- 
buke to your rising. It may be noted that this sentiment about 
poor relations, on which this essay is founded, is more acute in 
England than in America, because there the lines of class and 
social position are more closely drawn, and more intensified by im- 
memorial tradition. — 9. A death's head at your banquet. An 
allusion to an ancient custom of introducing a skeleton at a feast, to 
remind the company of their mortality. For a good example of 
this, see Cena Trinialchionis, by Petronius, where Trimalchio sets 
a small skeleton before his guests. — 10. Agathocles' pot. The 
pot would be a reminder to Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, that 
he was the son of a potter. — Mordecai, a despised Jew in the gate 
of Shushan the palace (^Esther iii. 2), and Lazarus, the beggar laid 
at the rich man's gate {^Luke xvi. 20), convey an obvious implica- 
tion. — The succeeding phrases are many of them adaptations of 
scripture expressions or situations; viz. a Xvovi, Proverbs xxvi. 13; a 
frog. Exodus viii. 3; a fly, Eccelesiastes x. i ; a mote, Matthew vii. 3; 
one thing, etc., Ltike x. 42 (which Lamb negatives) ; the hail in 
harvest, Proverbs xxvi. i. /!yfl;/;;^ Ixxviii. 47. All these are scrip- 
ture examples of some sort of anomaly or incongruity. 

87 : 16. Known by his knock. As this is amplified in the next 
two sentences, it is a good instance of Lamb's delicacy of descrip- 
tion; in a way, too, it gives the key-note of the whole paragraph. 



Notes 



213 



Note the function of the dash (here without the comma) in this 
paragraph; it always introduces a sly turn of thought which con- 
tains the point of the antithetic description. Note, also, in each 
sentence, how the description is so turned as to suggest a stab to 
the host's pride. — 89 : 17. Rid of two nuisances, that is, the 
chair and the Poor Relation. 

89 : 19. And that is — a female Poor Relation. A third use 
of the dash may here be noted; it delays the predicate, and so 
calls more attention to it. The same thing may be .seen in the 
first and last sentences, respectively, of the essay. — Note the dis- 
paragement conveyed in the words female and she-relative, 1. 22. 
— 90 : 5. Most provokingly humble. Note how the details of 
this paragraph illustrate this trait; and consider the shade of differ- 
ence in character between the female Poor Relation and the male 
described in the previous paragraph. The humility furnishes per- 
haps the key. — 15. Mistaken the piano for a harpsichord. The 
harpsichord was the predecessor of the piano, but a humbler and 
inferior instrument, such as a Poor Relation would remember from ' 
less prosperous days. 

90 : 17. Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play. The play is The 
Confederacy, by Sir John Vanburgh. In his essay On Some of the 
Old Actors, Lamb mentions this character in connection with the 
acting of John Palmer, with whom the part was a favourite : " Jack 
in Dick Amlet was insuperable." — 91 : i. An Amlet in real life 
. . . Poor W . In a Key which Lamb furnished with his char- 
acters, he identifies W with Favell, who "left Cambridge 

because he was asham'd of his father, who was a house-painter 
there." Favell has already been mentioned in the essay on Christ 's 
Hospital (see 41 : 2), where he is said to have been " ill capable of 
enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats 
of learning." — 15, To elude notice. It will be remembered that 
Christ's Hospital was a charity-school, so that any notice that the 
scholars attracted in " this sneering and prying metropolis " would 
be keenly felt by such a boy as W , as directed to a charity- 



214 Notes 

boy. — 21 . Aversion from. We more frequently say " aversion to.'''* 
Query : Is there a difference of shade in meaning which makes the 
preposition /r^;;^ more suitable here? — 23. With Nessian venom. 
An allusion to the shirt poisoned with the blood of the Centaur 
Nessus, which wrought the death of Hercules. — 24. Latimer, 
. . . and . . . Hooker, who became eminent in English history and 
letters, were servitors at the university. — 93 : 8. The Artist Evan- 
gelist, that is, St. Luke (seel. 12), who by tradition is said to have 
been a painter, and to have painted a picture of the Virgin Mother. 
— 13. Knew his mounted sign. In Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 
1013, which passage Lamb here adapts, it is 

" The Fiend looked up, and knew 
His mounted scale aloft ; not more ; but fled 
Murmuring;" 

In Milton the golden scales, displayed in the heavens, showed, by 
the representation of Satan in the lighter one, that the decree 
was against him; here a similar suggestion is conveyed by the 
" mounted sign." 

93 : 23. The earliest impressions. It may be noted with 
what zest Lamb turns, in illustrating almost any subject, to scenes 
and impressions of his childhood. — 94 : 9. At Lincoln. The 
Lambs came originally from Lincolnshire ; and in Lincoln there 
are still traces of the social gulf, or antipathy, between the two 
parts of the town. — 10. The Mint. . . the Tower. The buildings 
of the British Mint are on Tower Hill ; so the two would, in a 
child's mind, be associated together in the same mysterious im- 
pression. — 29. The code of these young Grotiuses. Hugo 
Grotius (1583-1645), an eminent early Dutch philosopher, wrote a 
work entitled De Jure Belli et Pads ; from which title Lamb takes 
the suggestion of his epithet. — 95 : 19. The viand, which I have 
already mentioned. See 94 : 5 ; the sweet pudding which was 
perhaps a bit of old-time fare from the days when the relations had 
lived together in Lincolnshire. — 22. My aunt. An aunt Hetty, 



Notes 2 1 5 



whose real name was Sarah Lamb. She is the relative mentioned 
in the essay on Christ'' s Hospital {%^^ 22: 22) ; and her charac- 
ter is described somewhat at length in the essay on My Relations, 
second paragraph. She is there described as a " steadfast, friendly 
being," "with some little asperities in her constitution," being 
" one whom single blessedness had soured to the world." The 
mixture of kindness and asperity comes out perceptibly here. — 
96 : 3. John Billet. The fact that Lamb gives the name in full 
would suggest, in his case, that it is not the man's real name. — 
14. This was — a Poor Relation. It may be noted, as we think 
back over this last paragraph, how Lamb's kindliness of feeling 
seems to soften the satire of the opening paragraph of the essay. 
There was wit and point, but no bitterness in his satire. 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

Pages 97-108 

The present essay, besides the intimate light it throws on Lamb's 
temperament and character, furnishes a good occasion for studying 
the developement of an idea into an essay; and this because the 
structure of this essay as a whole is of the simplest type. It con- 
sists merely of an opening paragraph which propounds and ac- 
curately discriminates the idea he would treat, and then four con- 
crete illustrations drawn from Scotchmen, Jews, negroes, and 
Quakers, each contained in a single paragraph, except the last, 
which has two paragraphs, one of discrimination and one of illus- 
tration. It will be a good study to verify this simple structure ; also 
to note how naturally the idea grows from one illustrative example 
to another. The writer begins with those who are farthest away 
from his sympathies, those whom he cannot like, though he has 
always tried to do so ; and the ground of his antipathy is the dif- 
ference in intellect. Then he goes on to those for whom he has, 
"in the abstract, no disrespect," but in describing them defines im- 
perfect sympathy from a new point of view, or rather of feeling, 



21 6 Notes 

namely, racial antipathy. The third he passes briefly and lightly 
over; people for whom he has " felt yearnings of tenderness," but 
his imperfect sympathy with them has a physical ground. Finally, 
he takes for illustration a class for whom he has positive love, respect, 
veneration, yet finds an insuperable moral or rather spiritual ground 
for not identifying his sympathies fully with them„ All this fur- 
nishes a valuable study in the literary development of an idea from 
its simpler and plainer to its most minute and intimate aspects; and 
it is recommended that the student go through the essay with this 
thought of its orderly development in view. 

Note first the use that Lamb makes of the quotation which serves 
as his motto. It is not employed, as mottoes generally are, to 
embody his thought, but rather as something from which he dis- 
sents ; that is, as a point of departure. So used, however, it serves 
all the better the purpose he has in mind, namely, to make a some- 
what fine and subtle discrimination, to define his term, imperfect 
sympathies, down to exact limits. 

97 : 2. Antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy. Sir Thomas Browne 
evidently makes a shade of distinction between these words ; look 
them up and see if you can tell what it is. Perhaps the rest of the 
motto will help determine. 

97 : 6. The author of the Religio Medici. Sir Thomas Browne 
(1605-1682), an author from whom Lamb could with the more grace 
quote his motto because he was a man of whom, for his strongly 
marked and rather eccentric personality. Lamb was very fond; see 
Introduction, p. 12. — lO-ii. In the essay on Mackery End in 
Hertfordshire (43 : 10) he speaks of " the beautiful obliquities of 
the Religio Medici." The philosophical words and phrases of these 
lines are a half- whimsical imitation of Browne's style. — 11. Ad- 
mired. This word is not used so much in our modern sense of 
esteeming highly, as in the older and rarer sense of wonder at. In 
the next sentence, indeed, the words wondered at are taken up as 
a synonym and definition. — 16. Standing on earth, etc., from 
Milton's Paradise Lost, vii. 23, where, however, Milton has pole 



Notes 217 

for sky. Lamb had a way of adapting quotations to suit his con- 
text, thus making them more fitting and pertinent ; see note on 93 : 
12. — 17. National or individual. Note that these words cover the 
ground of Lamb's illustrations of imperfect sympathies ; Scotchmen 
and Jews are judged on national and racial grounds, Quakers on 
individual temperament. The original title of this essay in the 
London Magazine was: Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen and other 
Ijnperfect Sympathies. — 23. Sympathies, apathies, antipathies. 
It has been mentioned in the foot-note how these words run a per- 
fect scale of meaning, comprising, so to say, the whole range of ele- 
mental feelings. This essay is a description of personal feelings, 
almost or quite apart from reasoned logic. For apathies. Lamb's 
original essay had dispathies, — rarer, and somewhat less accu- 
rate in implication. — 98 : 3. The more purely English word, i.e. 
fellow, in 1. 6. 

99 : 3. An order of imperfect intellects, the writer ranges him- 
self under that order, not from a rhetorical self-depreciation, but as 
a real distinction. In the sense in which he sets himself over 
against the Scotch mind his intellect can be called imperfect. The 
whole distinction turns on this contrast of perfect (that is, com- 
pletely ordered) and imperfect; study this and get the distinction 
clear. The succeeding lines are a progressive amplification of the 
contrast. — 14. Essays, that is, trials or attempts. — 100 : 2. The 
brain of a true Caledonian. Here begins the second member of 
the contrast ; note how much clearer it comes out for the preparation 
that has been made for it. —4. His Minerva is born in panoply. 
An allusion to the familiar myth that Minerva, the goddess of wis- 
dom, sprang from the head of Jupiter fully grown and armed. The 
figure here is not only a pleasant but the briefest way of conveying 
Lamb's idea of a Scotchman's intellect. — 14. You cannot cry 
halves, that is, the Scotch mind is not so constituted as to share 
with others in the inception of an idea ; it must be all his or none. 
— 10 1 : 5. Upon the square. Lamb uses this phrase as just about 
synonymous with literally, and defines it further by contrast in the 



21 8 Notes 

next sentence, about metaphor. — 8. John Buncle. The reference 
is to a book by Thomas Amory (i69i(?)-i788), entitled The Life of 
John Buncle, Esq., a book published in 1756 and 1766, and ap- 
parently much prized by Lamb. It is mentioned in his essay on The 
Two Races of Afen. — 15. A print . . . after Leonardo da Vinci. 
The picture of Da Vinci's called The Virgin of the Rocks. Both 
Lamb and his sister wrote verses on the picture. — 27. Affirm, 
as annunciate it. Study the shade of distinction between these two, 
and how it applies to the Scotchmen that Lamb is thinking of. — 
102 : 15. A passionate fondness. There are several instances on 
record indicating Lamb's liking for Burns ; but in his original 
essay, after the words (103 : 2) " that you can admire him," Lamb 
added : " I have a great mind to give up Burns. There is certainly 
a bragging spirit of generosity, a swaggering assertion of indepen- 
dence, and all that, in his writings." — 103: 2. Thomson. James 
Thomson (i 700-1 748), a Scotchman, author of The Seasons, a book 
for which Lamb had an affection, preferring it, as he says in his 
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading (120 : 6), "a little torn, 
and dog's eared." — 3. Smollett. Tobias George Smollett (i 721- 
1771), a Scotch writer, principally of fiction. Rory (school-boy name 
for Roderick Random) and his companion Strap, in the novel oi Rod- 
erick Random, were not so portrayed as to flatter the Scotch pride. 
David Hume, the historian and philosopher (1711-1776), was also 
a Scotchman, whose unfinished history of England was continued, 
with indifferent success, by Smollett. Htunphry Clinker is the 
name of another of Smollett's principal novels. 

103 : 10. No disrespect for Jews. See the introductory note 
to this essay. Note the gradation between his feeling for this class 
of people and his feeling for Scotchmen. He has tried to like the 
latter but cannot; for these he has " in the abstract, no disrespect," 
but he cannot bring himself to be " in habits of familiar intercourse " 
M'ith any of them. It is a matter of personal taste, not of reasoned 
theory. — 12. Stonehenge, so ancient that its purpose and uses 
are unknown, is the typical English piece of prehistoric antiquity; 



Notes 219 

hence its pertinence here as a term of comparison. — 16. The story 
of Hugh of Lincoln. The legendary story of a small boy of Lin- 
coln who was tortured to death by the Jews. A fringe of miracle, 
in the popular version, gathered- round the story. — 21. Kindly. 
In Lamb's use of this word here, it seems to retain much of its old 
meaning of naturally. The words im^/and kin are from the same 
source; we have the original sense in the word mankind ; so here 
the original sense is embodied in the word, with perhaps something 
of its more modern sense of amiably. — 24. A Hebrew. Except 
here Lamb has used the term Jew. The word Hebrew seems 
rather to connote their race and temperamental traits; the word 
feiu^z. little more their religion. — 104: 10, A wet Quaker. As 
the Quakers reject the Christian sacraments, a Quaker who retained 
baptism would be an anomaly comparable to the moderate or Chris- 
tianizing Jew. — II. B would have been, etc. John Braham 

(i774(?)-i856) (the name Braham shortened from Abraham) was 
a very famous singer of Lamb's time, whom Lamb greatly admired. 
In one of his letters Lamb writes of him : " He was a rare composi- 
tion of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel; yet all these elements 
mixed up so kindly in him that you could not tell which prepon- 
derated." The criticism of him here is not lack of admiration; it 
rather deplores his proselytism to Christianity, and wants him " more 
in keeping" with the original bent of his race. The sentiment of 
self-consistency in character and action was strong in Lamb; the 
quality is praised and illustrated in his essay on Mrs. Battle'' s Opin- 
ions on Whist. Of her strenuous way of playing at cards he says, 
" It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world 
to do, — and she did it." — 15. Cannot conquer the Shibboleth. 
An allusion to the test by which the Gileadites were separated from 
the Ephraimites; %ee. Jtidges xii. 5, 6. "And it was so, that when 
any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, * Let me go over,' the men 
of Gilead said unto him, ' Art thou an Ephraimite ?' If he said, 
'Nay'; then said they unto him, 'Say now Shibboleth'; and he 
said, ' Sibboleth ' ; for he could not frame to pronounce it right : 



2 20 Notes 

then they laid hold on him, and slew him at the fords of the Jor- 
dan." — 16. "The children of Israel," etc. An aria from Han- 
del's oratorio of Israel in Egypt. — 105 : 3. Jael had, etc. It 
was Jael who (see Judges iv. 18^-21), first inviting the Canaanite 
general, Sisera, into her tent and giving him drink, then murdered 
him in his sleep. Such treachery of character could be hid by 
" those full dark inscrutable eyes," which Lamb makes typical of 
the Hebrew female physiognomy. 

105 : 5. Yearnings of tenderness. See note introductory to 
this essay. Lamb's feeling toward negroes, in the abstract, is still 
stronger than in previous cases; yet his antipathy is simpler and 
more elemental; which he dismisses in briefest terms," — because 
they are black." — 8. What Fuller beautifully calls. Thomas 
Fuller was one of Lamb's favourite quaint authors. It is from 
Fuller that he quotes and adapts the simile of the Spanish great 
galleon and the English man-of-war in Chrisfs Hospital; see 
40 : 1-8. Fuller's principal work was his Wo7'thies of England ; 
the metaphor here quoted is from his Holy and Profane State, in a 
chapter on " The Good Sea Captain." 

105 : 12. Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. In these last 
described Lamb's sentiment of respect and admiration reaches its 
highest; and the corresponding ground for his imperfect sympathy 
is by so much the finer drawn and delicate, though not less real. 
His ground of admiration for the Quaker worship is given, almost 
without any abating criticism, in his essay on A Quaker'' s Meeting ; 
in which, with somewhat unusual intensity of emotion, he says, " O 
when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings, 
and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is, to 
go and seat yourself, for a quiet half-hour, upon some undisputed 
corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers! " — 18. (As Des- 
demona would say), the passage of Othello which gives what 
Desdemona did say (i. 3. 249) is : — 

" That I did love the Moor to live with him, 
My downright violence and storm of fortunes 
May trumpet to the world." 



Notes 221 

— 25. (According to Evelyn). John Evelyn (1620 -1706), who 
is principally known from his Diary, which ranks with Pepys's Diary 
for importance. The present reference, however, is to a piece of 
his entitled Acetaria : a Discourse of Sallets. — 26. My gusto. 
Lamb uses this word partly as a synonym for appetites (24) , and partly 
to discriminate the coarser and animal aspect of what we express 
by the word taste. — 27. To sit a guest, etc., the passage of Para- 
dise Regained (ii. 277) which Lamb quotes and adapts is : — 

"Sometimes that with Elijah he partook, 
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse ; "■ 

see also Daniel i. 12. 

107 : 3. He knows that his syllables are weighed. With this 
assertion in mind, it will be worth while to look back over the 
paragraph and see how accurately Lamb discriminates between 
the Quaker's exactness in expression and his alleged indirectness. 
It is a good example of Lamb's fineness both in the use of language - 
and in the discrimination of moral values. — 7- A more sacred 
example. Lamb's reference is generally to the way Jesus turned 
the tables on the Pharisees and others who tried to ensnare him 
in his words; see examples in Matthew xxi. 23-27; xxii. 15-33. 

— 18. To Penn. William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of 
Pennsylvania, who was eminent among the English Quakers. 
The answer here quoted is recorded of a trial of William Penn 
and William Mead for creating disturbance, and is given in 
Sewel's History of the People called Qtiakers, — 22. I was travel- 
ling . . . with three male Quakers. We may here remind our- 
selves that it is Elia, an assumed character, and not Lamb, who 
fathers these Essays; for this incident of the three Quakers did not 
happen to Lamb, but was related to him by the surgeon. Sir Anthony 
Carlisle. The assumed character of Elia is free to appropriate inci- 
dents and experiences as if they were his own. — 108 : 7. And 
formally tendered it. Consider how this act, wdth its sequel, 
illustrates what Lamb is describing, the Quakers' absoluteness 



222 Notes 

of speech. — 26, A soporific on my moral feeling. Is this "moral 
feeling," which will awake again, the secret of Lamb's imperfect 
sympathy with Quakers ? It will be noted that by the time he 
reaches the end of the essay his sytnpathy deviates but very 
slightly from the class he describes ; that is, is so little imperfect 
that he justifies it only on ground of personal sentiment, hardly 
more than a whim. 

OLD CHINA 

Pages 109-117 

In this essay Lamb returns to his favourite strain of reminiscence. 
The title is chosen much as was the subject of Mafkery End, in 
Hertfordshire (p. 42), not so much to designate what the essay 
is about, as to furnish an occasion for the autobiographical reflec- 
tion which is his real object. In other ways, too, this essay may 
read as a kind of pendant to Mackery End, in Hertfordshire ; it 
carries on and completes the account of Bridget Elia {i.e. Mary 
Lamb) which that essay begins. 

It will be noted, as regards the construction of this essay, that 
the matter suggested by the title is carried on as far as no: 
1 2,' when by a natural and graceful transition the writer launches 
into his reminiscence; which then proceeds for its own sake until 
the very last sentence, 117 : 20, makes a kind of farewell bow to the 
subject before dismissing it. 

109 : 2. When I go to see any great house. In his essay 

on Blakesmoor in H shire Lamb describes his visit to " the 

deserted apartments of [a] fine old family mansion." The main 
interest of such a visit, for him, seemed to be in the sentiments 
and fancies it called up from the past; it will be recalled, too, 
what meditations of that kind were suggested by the South- 
Sea House, see p. 65, second paragraph. — 3. Next for the 

picture gallery. In Blakesmoor in H shire, the picture 

gallery is thus described, " Mine was that gallery of good old fam- 



Notes 223 

ily portraits, which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my 
own family name, one — and then another — would seem to smile, 
reaching forward from the canvas, to recognize the new relationship; 
while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their 
dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity." All this, as we see, is in 
the strain of sentiment in which LamlD delighted, and which indeed 
characterizes the present essay. — 7. The first play. Recall the 
essay on My Fir si Flay, p. 50, 

109 : 14. That world before perspective. In the Chinese art 
as seen in the decoration of tea-cups the relative size and shading 
of objects due to various distances is disregarded; hence the ab- 
surdities in position and posture humorously described in the suc- 
ceeding paragraphs. It is with a sly irony that he speaks of what 
"the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity" (1. 19), has done; for 
to prevent one the artist has fallen into another absurdity. The irony 
of this whole description of Old China consists in giving the effects of 
the crude art as if they were the results of skilled and intended work. 

Ill : I. These summer clouds in Bridget, that is, in his sister, 
Mary Lamb, whom he is really describing under the name of his 
cousin Bridget Elia. The " passing sentiment " which he here calls 
a summer cloud turns out to be an access of sound sentiment about 
the comforts of comparative poverty, which corresponds well with 
the remark he has already made of her in Mackery Fnd, in Hert- 
fordshire : "That which was good and venerable to her, when a 
child, retains its authority over her mind still. She never juggles 
or plays tricks with her understanding" (43 : 21). 

Ill : 17. The brown suit. Wordsworth, in A FoeVs Epitaph, 
thus describes Lamb : — 

" But who is he, with modest looks, 
And clad in homely russet brown ? 
He murmurs near the running brooks 
A music sweeter than their own." 

For twenty years, in the India House, it is said, Lamb wore a snuff- 
colored suit; and thereafter wore black, and had somewhat the 



224 Notes 

appearance of a clergyman. In his essay on The Wedding, he thus 
speaks of his habit of wearing black: "She (one of the guests at 
the wedding) was pleased to say that she had never seen a gentle- 
man before me give away a bride in black. Now black has been 
my ordinary apparel so long — indeed 'I take it to be the proper 
costume of an author — the stage sanctions it — that to have ap- 
peared in some lighter colour would have raised more mirth at my 
expense, than the anomaly had created censure." — 19. That folio 
Beaumont and Fletcher. In his Detached Thoughts on Books and 
Reading (121 : 25) Lamb writes : *' On the contrary, I cannot 
read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions 
are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them." 
Lamb's copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, a folio, still exists, enriched 
with penciled MS. notes by Coleridge, to whom he had lent it. — 
25. Islington, now included in London, was then a suburban 
place; though the Lambs seemed then to have lived in Penton- 
ville, near the Islington boundary. — 112: 6. Those neat black 
clothes. See note on iii : 17. 

112 : 18. That print after Leonardo. The Lambs gave it a 
name to suit themselves ; it is a print ordinarily known as Modesty 
and Vanity. Mary Lamb wrote a poem on it. 

113 : 9. As Izaak Walton has described, in his Co77iplete An- 
gler (1653), a delightful book, rather of gentle literary flavour than 
of sport. The reference to Piscator and Trout Hall, below, is to 
Cotton's continuation of the book. 

113 : 23. Where it was we used to sit, when we saw, etc. 
As soon as he approaches the subject of the theatre Lamb betrays 
his keen interest in plays and players, an interest which makes 
every reminiscence connected M'ith them vivid. The Battle of 
Ilexhaiu and The Surrender of Calais were plays by George Col- 
man the Younger (1762-1836). 77ie Children in the Wood, by 
Thomas Morton, which was a favourite of Lamb's, is mentioned in 

Barbara S (58:3), and an incident connected with Miss 

Kelly's acting in it as a child is given (61 : 7-18). Of Bannister's 



Notes 225 

("Jack Bannister's") acting in this play he says, in On Some of 
the Old Actors, " Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister's 
performance of Walter in The Children in the Wood." 

115 : 6. What I call a treat. The language all along here 
is as natural and common as if it came without effort; but note, in 
the amplification of this definition, how accurately chosen and fol- 
lowed out the distinctions are, 

116 : 3. As you used to quote it, etc. The whole poem from 
which this phrase is taken, a poem by Charles Cotton, entitled 
The Neiv Year, is quoted in Lamb's essay "on Nezu -Yearns Eve. 
The couplet in which the phrase occurs runs thus : ^- 

" Then let ns welcome the New Guest 
With lusty brimmers of the best." 

116 : 10. A rhetorical vein. The word rhetorical is used not in 
the sense often given to it, of artificial or high-sounding, but nearly 
the same as fluent, or perhaps imaginative; see 1. 12. — 23. Those 
natural dilations of the youthful spirit. What has been de- 
scribed in the essay that can be given this name ? — 117 : 5. Ban- 
nister and Mrs. Bland, see 113 : 25. — 20. That merry little 
Chinese waiter, etc. In coming back for a sentence to the sub- 
ject named in the title, is Lamb slyly poking fun at the situation 
of these two at their tea, and the patronizing tone he has taken upon 
himself to use in his answer to her ? Good literature is full of such 
delicate suggestions. 

DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 
Pages i 18-126 

In this essay, which, though appearing in Last Essays of Elia, 
was one of his earlier written ones. Lamb reveals his tastes in read- 
ing, and indirectly much of his humorous and whimsical, yet, on 
the whole, soundly sensible, character. Behind the light vein of 
irony one can read in his words the natural feeling that one has 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 1 5 



226 Notes 

for literature which engages the imagination and sympathies, as 
distinguished from the books that give information or that aim to 
enforce belief and conduct. In short, the books that Lamb men- 
tions with liking are such books, mainly old ones, as contain most 
of the vein which Lamb has reproduced in his essays, books whose 
spirit he has assimilated. In the words of Bernard Barton's sonnet 
to Elia, — 

" From the olden time 
Of Authorship thy Patent should be dated, 
And thou with Marvell, Browne, and Burton, mated." 

The title Detached Thoughts puts aside all pretensions to an 
ordered and planned essay ; the piece is like notes put down as 
they occurred, without connexion or progress. The original essay 
in the London Magazine was marked " To be continued," but Lamb 
did not resume the subject. 

ii8 14. The Relapse. A comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh (about 
1 666-1 726). This motto gives expression to just such a conceit as 
would take Lamb ; he mentions this particular quotation no fewer 
than three times in his letters and works. 

118 : 13. I cannot sit and think. This is a half true description 
of Lamb's type of mind ; he was not adapted to the severe and stu- 
dious thinking which is implied in research or philosophy, and in 
this sense he could not "sit and think." At the^same time, it was 
only half true that he loved " to lose himself in other men's minds." 
Rather he found himself there; that is, his books (the congenial 
ones) set him thinking, in that seeming desultory but really crea- 
tive way which he has described in Imperfect Sy?iipathies ; see 
99 : 6-100 : 2. Thus, for him, his favourite books were what Emer- 
son says books are essentially for, to the scholar, namely, for " noth- 
ing but to inspire." It was merely in this sense that books thought 
for him. 

118 : 15. Shaftesbury . . . Jonathan Wild. These two are 
mentioned as marking the extremes of his taste, and whimsically 
assumed to cover the whole range of legitimate books. In his 



Notes 



227 



essay on The Genteel Style in Writing, Lamb mentions " the inflated 
finical rhapsodies of Shaftesbury," as if the latter were a type of the 
spurious genteel style, contrasted with " the plain natural chit- 
chat of Temple," who represents the truly genteel. Over against 
this extreme he sets Jojtathan Wild, not an author but a book : 
Fielding's Life of Jonathan Wild the Great, who is portrayed as the 
type of a thorough-going scoundrel, great in evil and crime. 

118 : 19. Books which are no books. In this class, besides the 
playful catalogue of the first clause. Lamb names generally such 
books as do not come under the title of belles-lettres ; books of a 
ponderous and unimaginative nature, or such as young people 
now-a-days call "poky." Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson were the 
historians of repute in Lamb's day, and are indeed still standard in 
their way; Beattie was a minor poet, then accounted major, author 
of The Minstrel ; and Soame Jenyns, a now forgotten author of works 
of philosophical inquiry. Flavius Josephus, author oi Jewish Antiq- 
uities and The History of the Jewish War, was a Jewish historian of 
the first century A.D., an authority much depended on for Biblical and 
Jewish history. Paley's Moral Philosophy, by the very title, excludes 
itself from Lamb's reading sympathies ; as a matter of fact Paley's 
works were written in eminently clear and readable style, and in 
Lamb's day were in their religious and philosophical way stand- 
ard. — 119 : 4. With these exceptions. It will be noted that for 
weighty reading, excluding as they do scientific, historical, and 
philosophical works almost in toto, the list of exceptions is some- 
what formidable. — 5. A taste so catholic (z.<f. universal). The 
playful irony of the remark is accentuated by the thought of the 
books he excludes. 

119 : 7. Things in books' clothing. The phrase is of course 
modelled on the ^sop fable of the wolf in sheep's clothing. — 
12. What " seem its leaves." This phrase is an adaptation of Mil- 
ton's description of the monstrous shape in Paradise Lost, ii. 672 : — ■ 

" What seemed his head 
The likeness of a kingly crown had on." 



22 8 Notes 

— 13. A withering Population Essay. Lamb wrote just as the 
thinkers of England were making inquiries in principles of economics 
and social conditions, a kind of writing which since then has devel- 
oped an enormous literature. The allusion here is to Malthus's 
Essay on Population, written 1798, a book which has had great 
influence in its sphere, but is of course typical of a kind of reading 
to which Lamb had a hearty antipathy. — 14. Steele . . . Far- 
quhar . . . Adam Smith. These contrasted names simply carry 
out Lamb's contrast of literary types. Steele (i 672-1 729), a 
contemporary of Addison and associated with him in the graceful 
essay writing of The Spectator, is also mentioned by Lamb as the 
author of a comedy, The Funeral ; Farquhar (1678-1707), one 
of the Restoration playwrights, author of The Beaux' Stratagem 
and other comedies; — these are to Lamb's taste; while Adam 
Smith ( 1 723-1 790), who as author of The Wealth of Nations 
(1776), which is one of the classics of economic science, would be 
to his distaste and disappointment. — 15. Blockheaded ency- 
clopaBdias. The names of encyclopaedias here given are the old- 
time predecessors of such works as our Encyclopcedia Britannica 
and The New International Encyclopcedia. Lamb calls them 
blockheaded simply because they are works of information and 
reference, and have no juice of imaginative interest in them. — 
19. Paracelsus . . . and . . . Raymund Lully were old-time 
alchemists and philosophers, who would interest Lamb from the very 
quaintness and obsoleteness of their speculations. Paracelsus 
(1493-1541), a German doctor of medicine, whose real name was 
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, wrote on such medical 
matters as the Elixir of Life in that mystical vein which charac- 
terized the alchemists. Browning has made him the subject of 
one of his greater poems. Raymond Lully (1235-1315), an alchem- 
ist and philosopher who sought the philosopher's stone, was in his 
time known as Doctor Illuminatus. — 22. My ragged veterans. 
Lamb's library was picked up largely from book stalls, and con- 
sisted of copies or editions that had some unique rarity or oddity to 



Notes 229 



commend them. The way he obtained them is exemplified in the 
account of his Beaumont and Fletcher in the essay on Old China ; 
see III : 20 ff. Of his books Crabb Robinson writes: "Such a 
number of first-rate works in very bad condition is, I think, nowhere 
to be found." And Leigh Hunt wrote of his library : " It looks like 
what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from the book stalls." 

119 : 2T,. Strong-backed and neat-bound. This desideratum 
of binding is the inclusive quality which covers all the rest, and as 
here mentioned is practical and prosaic; but as the paragraph is 
carried out the qualities of binding suitable for various types 
of literature become almost poetic for the delicate fitness of the 
dress to the nature of the volume. The ability to describe a book 
with all the discrimination and sympathy that he would give to a 
person is an instance of his extraordinary intimacy of feeling. — 

120 : 17. Some Lethean cup. Allusion to the river Lethe in the 
underworld, whose waters conferred forgetfulness. 

120 : 23. Great Nature's Stereotypes. The art of stereotyping 
the pages of a book, and thus preserving the plates already set up 
and corrected, was new enough in Lamb's day to furnish a striking 
illustration of these " perpetually self-reproductive volumes." — 

121 : I. We know not where, etc. As usual, Laml:)'s quotation 
(here from Othello,Y. 2. 12) is slightly inexact. The original goes : — 

" I know not where is that Promethean heat 
That can thy light relume." 
— 3. Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess. This 
book, or at least the writer of it, was a great favourite of Lamb's; 
the ground of his liking seeming to be not so much the excellence 
as the eccentricity of the quaint writer. See 43 : 13, and note 
thereon. She seemed to be a kind of epitome of the oddities 
in which Lamb delighted. A contemporary writes of Elia : " Sir 
Thomas Browne was a 'bosom cronie' of his — so was Burton, and 
old Fuller. In his amorous vein he dallied with that peerless 
duchess of many-folio odour; and with the hey-day comedies 
of Beaumont and Fletcher he induced light dreams." 



230 Notes 

121 : 20. Without pretending, etc. Note how real and vital a 
part every feature of a book plays in Lamb's appreciation; the 
illustrations to Shakespeare, good or bad, have their uses for him, 
though not always their intended uses. In My First Play 
(53 • 10) one of the plates in Rowe's Shakespeare is men- 
tioned. The Shakespeare Gallery engravings were a series of 
elaborate plates illustrative of Shakespeare, by different artists, 
published in 1802 under the name of the Boy dell engravings, from 
the then Lord Mayor of London who commissioned them. — 26. 
But in Folio, the large paged editions of books which were in 
vogue from the early stages of the art of printing. The portrait 
of Lamb, prefixed to the present edition of the essays, is a sketch 
by Maclise representing Lamb engaged in the perusal of his folios; 
it is thus characteristic of Lamb as we think of him in connection 
with "books and reading." — 122 14. I do not know a more 
heartless sight, etc. Note the affection for what is old and quaint 
and rare revealed by the use of the word heartless. Burton's Anat- 
omy of Melancholy, with its odd conceits, its wealth of foreign 
quotation and out-of-the-way learning, its general chaos of accumu- 
lated scraps, is pre-eminently a book to be kept in its original form. 
— 10. The wretched Malone. Edmund Malone (1741-1812) was 
a really able critic and editor of Shakespeare, to whom our modern 
time is indebted for much good scholarship; but his unfortunate 
meddling with Shakespeare's bust in Stratford church, as described 
here, causes Lamb to be somewhat less than just to his merits. We 
see Lamb for once in a mood approaching indignation. 

123 : 6. Bishop Andre wes' sermons. Lancelot Andrewes, 
Bishop of Winchester (i 555-1 626), was a divine of the Elizabethan 
time whose sermons became a religious classic for their sweetness 
of spirit and felicity of expression. They were favourite reading 
of Matthew Arnold. 

123 : 8. A solemn service of music. In the essay on Grace 
before Meat, published a few months before this essay. Lamb pro- 
poses saying a grace before reading Milton and Shakspeare and 



Notes 231 

the Fairy Queen (127 : 21); an expression of the same reverence 
noteworthy here. 

123 : 14. The Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale. Note the 
fitness of these titles to the occasion of reading. — What would 
Lamb convey by his peculiar use of the dash here to punctuate a 
paragraph ? Note a similar use in the essay, A Dissertation upon 
Roast Pig, 144 : 24, 148 : 7. Is it his way of conveying what he 
intends as a light, almost fleeting, yet especially refined suggestion ? 

124 : 4. Transpires ... by piecemeal. Note here the use of 
the word transpire in its accurate and proper sense, and distinguish 
this from the current misuse of the word as a synonym for happen. 

124 : 12. "The Chronicle is in hand, sir." After this sentence 
the original essay, as published in the Londoit Magazine, had the 
following paragraph : " As in these httle Diurnals I generally skip 
the Foreign News, the Debates — and the Politics — I find the 
Morning Herald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an 
agreeable miscellany, rather than a newspaper." Compare the char- 
acter of the thought conveyed in this paragraph with the rest of the 
essay, and consider if Lamb was wise in rejecting this from the 
essay as made up for its permanent book form. 

124 : 17. The old Town and Country Magazine, an eighteenth 
century periodical (1769-1792), would have for a magazine much 
the same quaintness and out-of-dateness that so delighted Lamb in 
his favourite old books. 

124 : 22. Poor Tobin, probably Lamb's friend mentioned in 
the essay on Chrises Hospital; see 26 : 3. 

124 : 28. Candide, a satire in story form by Voltaire, attacking 
the shallow optimism of the eighteenth century, and full of Vol- 
taire's mocking and audaciously irreligious spirit. 

125 : 2. (Her Cythera). Does Lamb introduce here, in paren- 
thesis, this name of a Grecian island sacred to Venus as a delicately 
antithetic suggestion of character to the suggestion conveyed in the 
name Primrose Hill ? — 6. I could have wished it had been — any 
other book. This paragraph, on Richardson's novel, Pamela, or 



232 Notes 

Virtue Reivarded, is an example of Lamb's extraordinary good 
sense in criticism, yet delicacy in conveying it. The book, so stren- 
uous in maintaining virtue, yet keeps the mind so occupied veith the 
thought of vice that it produces largely the effect of an impure book. 

125 : 17. A volume of Lardner. Nathanael Lardner, a Unita- 
rian theologian (i 684-1 768) wrote on such subjects as On the 
Credibility of the Gospel History. Snow Hill, near where is now 
Holborn Viaduct, would be then, perhaps more than now, a much 
congested place in business hours ; hence the incongruity of such 
reading in such circumstances. — 23. The five points, in the Cal- 
vinistic theology current in Lamb's day, were : — Original Sin, Pre- 
destination, Irresistible Grace, Particular Redemption, and the 
Final Perseverance of the Saints. It would take less than " an 
illiterate encounter with a porter's knot or a bread-basket," one 
may conjecture, to leave Lamb indifferent to such points as these. 

In the original magazine form of the essay, suggested no doubt 
by this Unitarian minister's untimely reading, Lamb introduced 
the following story of himself: "I was orice amused — there is a 
pleasure in affecting affectation — at the indignation of a crowd 
that was jostling in with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden 
theatre, to have a sight of Master Betty — then at once in his 
dawn and his meridian — in Hamlet. I had been invited quite 
unexpectedly to join a party, whom I met near the door of the 
playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of 
Johnson and Steevens's Shakespeare, which, the time not admitting 
of my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. 
Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening — the rtish, 
as they term it — I deliberately held the volume over my head, 
open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried 
up, and quietly read by the lamplight. The clamour became uni- 
versal. ' The affectation of the fellow,' cried one. ' Look at that 
gentleman reading, papa,' squeaked a young lady, who in her 
admiration of the novelty almost forgot her fears. I read on. * He 
ought to have his book knocked out of his hand,' exclaimed a pursy 



Notes 233 



cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to 
execute his kind intention. Still I read on — and, till the time 
came to pay my money, kept as unmoved, as Saint Antony 
at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, mopping, 
and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits 
undisturbed at the sight, as if he- were sole tenant of the desert. 
— The individual rabble (I recognised more than one of their ugly 
faces), had damned a Slight piece of mine but a few nights before, 
and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me 
out of countenance." Query: Is this paragraph, interesting as it 
is, too much of a digression from Lamb's essential subject even for 
a piece which claims to be only Detached Thoughts ? 

126 : 3. " Snatch a fearful joy." Quoted from Gray's Ode on a 

Distant Prospect of Eton College. — Martin B was Martin 

Charles Burney, a friend of the Lambs. — 5. Clarissa. Clarissa 
Harlozve, Richardson's most famous novel. — 10. A quaint poetess 
of our day. Lamb here quotes a poem by his sister, Mary Lamb, 
published in a volume of her editing, entitled Poetry for Children, 
1809. 

GRACE BEFORE MEAT 

Pages 127-137 

In this and the following essay Lamb takes up in his characteris- 
tic way phases of a subject which profoundly interested him, mainly 
from its spiritual relations, namely, the subject of bodily appetite. 
Earlier papers of his approached the subject in a more direct 
way, — papers on Edax on Appetite, Confessions of a Drunkard, 
and a poem. Farewell to Tobacco. The " chief failing " of Lamb 
has. been mentioned in the Introdziction (see p. 16) ; but from 
all that he wrote and from his convivialities it is impossible to 
conclude that he was really a slave to intemperance, or anything 
of a glutton. The essays before us, indeed, are quite opposite in 
implication ; they make for a delicacy and justness of taste which 
from the undeniable pleasures of the palate retain only what is fine 



234 Notes 

and elevating. The essay on Grace before Meat, with all its light- 
ness and humour, is really concerned to restore to its proper place 
the religious sentiments associated from time immemorial with eat- 
ing ; the essay on A Dissertation upon A' oast Pig, while its subject 
would seem to appeal merely to the gourmand and glutton, yet in 
the end robs the theme of all coarseness of suggestion. 

A critical article by Robert South ey in the Quarterly Review 
deplored in Elia the lack of " a sounder religious feeling"; it was 
probably the common suspicion, on the part of the conservative and 
orthodox, of any attitude to religion which is unconventional. The 
criticism was based apparently on several passages in Lamb's essays; 
but in a letter of reply to Southey, Lamb conjectures that this one 
may have furnished the main occasion. He says : " I am at a loss 
what particular essay you had in view (if my poor ramblings amount 
to that appellation) when you were in such a hurry to thrust in your 
objection, like bad news, foremost, — Perhaps the paper on Saying 
Graces was the obnoxious feature. I have endeavoured there to res- 
cue a voluntary duty — good in place, but never, as I remember, 
literally commanded — from the charge of an undecent formality. 
Rightly taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but want of 
grace; not against the ceremony, but the carelessness and sloven- 
liness so often observed in the performance of it," — The reader may 
well note whether, instead of being unfriendly to a "sounder 
religious feeling," the essay is not rather in the interest of it. It 
was not Lamb's way to inculcate religious, or indeed serious senti- 
ments, in a didactic way; his temperament and perhaps his lifelong 
experience forbade it; see Introdtiction, p. i8. But all the more 
finely and truly his innate reverence and tolerance and sympathy 
with the good comes out "between the lines"; the present essay 
furnishes a good occasion to verify this. 

127 : 9 The germ of the modern grace. In both this and the 
foUowmg essay, Lamb begins by assuming the method of the scholar, 
then just coming in but since then the prevailing method in research, 
of tracing things to their origin; thus he assumes the role of the 



Notes 1235 



philosopher. Note how this gives him occasion to draw at the out- 
set the contrast between " the shouts and triumphal songs" (1. 6), 
which would be the farthest remove from the expression of his real 
sentiment, and the "implied and silent gratitude" (1. 13), which 
makes the grace an inner and genuine religious impulse. 

127 : 20. For books, those spiritual repasts. See note on 
123 : 8, in the foregoing essay. — 128 : 7. Utopian Rabelaesian 
Christians. Lamb has in mind here a section of Rabelais (I. lii- 
Ivii), in which is described the Abbey of Theleme, founded by Gar- 
gantua for the cultivation of the reasonable and Christian graces. 
Rabelais, a French priest of the Reformation time, though his writ- 
ings are full of the coarseness and dirt of his age, was really a power 
in his humorous way to bring in an era of juster thought and religious 
good sense; and the section here alluded to is especially notable for 
this. In speaking of these Utopians Lamb imitates to some extent 
the Rabelaesian style, especially in his list of adjectives, 1. 4, which 
is quite characteristic of Rabelais and the pretentious wotds he 
uses. The name Homo Humanus (human man), taken from Rabe- 
lais, is in accord with his practical intent. — If Southey would take 
exception to Lamb's religious looseness, it would be as likely to have 
been from his apparently approving use of Rabelais, who for the 
devout-minded was a horrible example of impiety, as from anything 
in the essay. 

129 : 12. The heats of epicurism. Note the intense, almost 
exaggerated language of coarse and animal sense, into which Lamb 
falls in describing the pleasures of gourmandism; see 11, 5-15; 
130 : 11-18; 131 : 5-1 1. Over against this descriptive language 
one may set the words in which are described "these temperate 
dreams of the divine Hungerer," in which Lamb borrows in part 
the words of Milton; 132 : 7-27. — 20. To praise the Gods amiss. 
The phrase is a reminiscence of Milton, Comtcs, 1. 177. 

130 : 13. I would have them sit down as Christians, This 
contains the real point and purpose of the essay; see Lamb's answer 
to Southey, quoted in the second paragraph of the introductory note 



236 Notes 



above. — 22. When Jeshurun waxed fat. See Deuteronomy 
xxxii. 15. Jeshurun was the poetic name of the Israelite people; 
and in the passage referred to the nation is described under the 
figure of a fattened steer. The passage, verses 13-15 is descriptive, 
in Biblical language, of the effects on a nation of unaccustomed and 
abundant things to eat. The passage is a favourite with Lamb; see 
above, 26 : 16, and note. — 24. Anything but a blessing. See 
Virgil, j^neid, iii. 247-257. The allusion is not so much to the be- 
haviour in connexion with eating as to the instincts of the " harpy- 
nature." The figure is resumed and applied to the guests at " some 
great Hall feast," 131 : 3 ; where the "impatient harpies" are com- 
pared with " these Virgilian fowl." — 131 : 7. True thankfulness 
(which is temperance). Consider the justness of this identification. 

131 : 15. A table richly Spread, etc. W\\XQVi, Paradise Regained, 
ii, 340-347. 

131 : 27. A gaudy-day at Cambridge. Cambridge was Milton's 
university (Trinity College) ; and the reference is to some special 
holiday feast, which by students and dons would be observed at their 
common meal in Hall. — 28. A Heliogabalus, a Roman Emperor 
who, from his excesses and licentiousness, became the type of the 
coarsest luxuries. — 132 : 5. He that disturbed him, etc. Note the 
inverted, or so-called chiastic, construction of the sentence, — 
10. As appetite is wont to dream, etc. Paradise Regained, H. 264 
-278. The scripture scenes mentioned by Milton are : "By the brook 
of Cherith," i Kings xvii. 2-6 — a favourite scripture scene with 
Lamb; see 23 : 2 ; "how he fled," etc., I Kings xix. 3-8 ; "Daniel 
at his pulse," Daniel i. 12, 13. This last line is also quoted, or 
rather used, in lijiperfect Sympathies ; see 105 : 27. 

133 : 4. Seem to involve, etc. It will be observed that Lamb's 
objection is not a reasoned objection but purely a matter of feeling 
and sentiment. — 18. Neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers. Lamb 
adopts the phrase used in reproach of Jesus by the austere ones of 
his generation, Matthew xi. 19. 

133 : 28. I suspect his taste in higher matters. This harmony 



Notes 237 



of tastes, whether bodily or mental, which Lamb desiderates, is of 
a piece with his idea that the whole man should be self-consistent 
and harmonious; compare 104: 1 1, and note. — 134 : i. Phys- 
iognomical character. Perhaps Lamb means physiological. 
Would the latter word be more accurate ? — 1 1. Sapidless. Nearly 
synonymous with tasteless, but a word more in accord with Lamb's 
quaint vocabulary. In the next essay he uses the word Sapors, 
from the same root; 145: 15. — 13. The author of the Rambler, 
viz. Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose uncouthness of person and man- 
ner was in striking contrast to his intellectual sanity and sound 
sense. — 19. My thin face. What connotation gives fitness to 
this epithet ? — 25. Some great fish — his Dagon. Dagon, sup- 
posed from the derivation of the word to have been worshipped 
under the form of a fish, was a god of the Philistines; see Judges 
xvi. 23; I Samuel v. "Kissing his hand " was the idolatrous gesture 
of worship; see yb*^ xxxi. 27; and the words "no ark but the fat 
tureen " are an allusion to the ark which was the sacred shrine of 
the Hebrew worship. — 135: I. Of the Chartreuse. The Car- 
thusian monks of the monastery of Grenoble in France are bound 
to strict asceticism in food;, in the essay on A Quakej'^s IMeeting 
their vow of silence is also mentioned. — 6. Which children hear 
tales of, at Hog's Norton. A place on the borders of Oxfordshire 
and Warwickshire, where are to be heard some curious legends, 
concerning which Mr. E. V. Lucas writes: "An old proverb runs: 
' I think thou wast born at Hogg's Norton, where piggs play 
upon the organs ' . . . . One account of the origin of the legend is 
the organ-playing of a villager named Pigg. In Witt's Recreations 
there is this epigram on pigs devouring a bed of pennyroyal, 
commonly called organs : — 

" A goodwife once a bed of organs set, 
The pigs came in, and eat up every whit ; 
The good man said, ' Wife, you your garden may 
Hog's Norton call, here pigs on organs play.' " 



238 Notes 



— 19. Of next authority. The word nexrh used here exactly 
in its primitive sense = nearest. It is the superlative of nigh. 

136 : 5. With some sectaries, that is, members of some sects, 
or divisions of a sect. — 13. Might not Lucian have painted. 
The scene of the two clergymen suggests to Lamb a situation which 
might have been felicitously described by the religious satirist 
Lucian, who wrote his Dialogues of the Gods in the second century 
ridiculing the absurdities of the popular Greek religion. — 17. Fla- 
mens are pagan priests attached to particular gods. 

137 : 2. Most awful and overwhelming to the imagination. 
Lamb seems merely to refer to the implication in the phrase "'good 
creatures,' " 1. 4, the mystery and greatness of which were in his 
mind accentuated by the contrasted meagreness of the fare. — 
13. Trousers instead of mutton. The long blue gown over small- 
clothes and yellow stockings, the traditional garb of the charity- 
boys of Christ's, may help us understand how decencies are con- 
cerned here. 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
Pages 138-148 

Among the " books which are no books " enumerated by Lamb 
in his Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading he includes 
scientific treatises (118 : 22). For the formal and systematic 
methods of scientific and philosophic research, indeed, he had little 
liking. He was aware, however, of the increase of the scientific 
spirit in his time; he felt the atmosphere of it around him; and it 
was quite within the scope of his playful satire to conceive a line 
of thought in its terms, as if he were falling in with the prevailing 
tone of the day. The present essay is an instance in point. The 
rather pretentious and learned name by which it is called, a Dis- 
sertation, denotes something more precise and deeply investigated 
than an essay; yet on the other hand its subject, Roast Pig, is 
so- homely, so little suggestive of the dignity of science, that one 



Notes 



^39 



questions if he is not slyly poking satire at the whole solemn busi- 
ness of minute research. In other words, it is an essay with all the 
lightness of touch, humour, and whimsey, so characteristic of Lamb, 
masking under the playful assumption of deep learning. A similar 
satirical method was later employed by Carlyle in his volume Sartor 
Resartus, which professes to be a treatise on the philosophy of 
clothes. 

A similar motion of going back to the origin of human customs 
has been noted at the beginning of the foregoing essay. There, 
however, his serious and even religious purpose was but thinly dis- 
guised. Here he would confess to no didactic or edifying design at 
all; and yet does not the very refinement he has contrived to lend 
to so homely a subject, together with the contrasts in descriptive 
language, betray an effort to make the business of eating as little 
gross and animal, as far removed from coarse gluttony, as possible? 
It was a matter, it would seem, that Lamb's essentially fine nature 
had more at heart than he would reveal, except indirectly. 

The structure of the essay (for it has a structure) is quite in ac- 
cord with its assumption of scholarly research. Of the eleven pages 
which it takes up in this edition, five and a half are occupied in 
leading up to and propounding the theme; and this first part, 
which puts on the airs of being the weightiest, turns out to be a 
piece of scholarly play. The rest, the Dissertation proper, is a 
series of somewhat loosely related remarks, in Lamb's pecuHarly 
light and delicate vein. Read the essay once through to get this 
general impression of its structure. As to the style, there is less 
than is usual in Lamb of the tissue of quotation and allusion, perhaps 
from its being conceived in imitation of the scientific vein; hence 
there is less occasion for annotation. 

138 : I. A Chinese manuscript. Considerable inquiry, for the 
most part profitless, has been laid out on the question where Lamb 
got the central incident of his essay. We may be pretty sure it 
was from no manuscript or book source; to represent it so was a 
part of Lamb's scholarly pretension; — though it may have had its 



240 Notes 

origin in a Chinese or other folk-story. Lamb's friend Thomas 
Manning, a mathematician and traveller, to whom Lamb attributes 
the translating of the manuscript, is said to have contributed articles 
on Chinese jests to the New Monthly Magazine ; and this story, 
with its preposterous exaggeration of the primal custom, is much 
such a story as would be told in jest, and perhaps picked up by a 
traveller. One writer, indeed, claims to give the story which was 
lent by Manning to Lamb, and which Lamb reproduced in a ver- 
sion to suit his purpose. This is the uncoloured form in which he 
gives it : — 

" A child, in the early ages, was left alone by its mother in a 
house in which was a pig. A fire took place; the child escaped, 
the pig was burned. The child scratched and pottered amongst 
the ashes for its pig, which at last it found. All the provisions 
being burnt, the child was very hungry, and not yet having any 
artificial aids, such as golden ewers and damask napkins, began to 
lick or suck its fingers to free them from the ashes. A piece of fat 
adhered to one of his thumbs, which, being very savoury alike in 
taste and odour, he rightly judged to belong to the pig. Liking it 
much, he took it to his mother, just then appearing, who also tasted 
it, and both agreed that it was better than fruit or vegetables. 

"They rebuilt the house, and the woman, after the fashion of good 
wives, who, says the chronicle, are now very scarce, put a pig into 
it, and was about to set it on fire, when an old man, one whom 
observation and reflection had made a philosopher, suggested that 
a pile of wood would do as well. (This must have been the father 
of economists.) The next pig was killed before it was roasted, and 
thus 

' From low beginnings, 
We date our winnings. ' " 

— 6. Their great Confucius. /\11 this sentence about Confucius 
is a whimsical invention of Lamb's, following out his learned vein. 

— 22, No less than nine in number. Note how Lamb maintains 
accuracy of usage with the word less. Less refers more naturally to 



Notes 241 

quantity; y^<fr to number. He could have said "no fewer than 
nine"; but in using less instead he restores accuracy of usage by 
adding the words in number. This is but calling attention to the 
care which a good writer, without seeming to do so, bestows on 
language; most of Lamb's choice of words and phrasing will bear 
as strict test as this. — 139 : 15. Overflowed his nether lip. Even 
so casual a thing as his mouth watering Lamb exaggerates in 
description, in keeping with the uncouth primitiveness of the boy. 
" In his booby fashion," 1. 18, is in the same conception. After the 
word crackling below, the original essay had the sentence, " He 
stood in a posture of idiot wonder." Lamb's long dwelling on the 
amplifying details of the incident is not to describe the boy's slow 
understanding; it adds, of course in ironical vein, to our sense 
of the momentousness of the discovery. — 140 : 7. Heeded not any 
more, etc. Lamb is describing in his assumed scientific fashion a 
creature so crudely human that the purely animal appetite, and the 
satisfaction of it, absorbs his whole nature. Much of the language 
along here is conformed to that conception; it is the contrast to 
what he will be describing, or implying, later in the essay; com- 
pare, for instance, 144 : 6-18, and the paragraph at the bottom 
of p. 145. 

142 : I. Then an inconsiderable assize town. Observe how 
throughout the rest of the story Lamb maintains the humorous 
and sham-scientific tone of the account by mixing in modern ele- 
ments — anachronisms as tney are called — belonging to a later 
stage of civilization, and of course impossible in the rude state 
of society assumed. Think of assize towns, of trial by jury, of the 
machinery of a court, of reporters, of town and country houses, 
of insurance offices, and of a science of architecture, in a social 
state in which men were just learning to eat their food cooked 
instead of raw, and with mental faculties so primitive that they 
deemed they must burn a house down in order to roast a pig ! To 
express aH this in the sober language of verisimilitude belongs of 
course to Lamb's elaborate literary play. 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — 1 6 



242 Notes 

142 : 27. A sage arose, like our Locke. In Lamb's time John 
Locke (1632 -1 704) was the standard philosopher and sage; his 
Essay concerning the Human Understanding was, and indeed still 
is, one of the classics of philosophy. — 143 : 5. Concludes the 
manuscript. If the story told in note 138 : i is authentically 
Lamb's source, this moral or application, here couched in learned 
language, is represented by the verse couplet at the end. It is 
interesting also to note the little suggestions of the original which 
Lamb has enlarged upon. 

143 : 8. Without placing too implicit faith. Observe that this 
is Lamb's hint that he has been fooling all the while; a similar hint 
has already been noted at the end of the essay on The South-Sea 
House; see 76 : 22. — 12. That pretext and excuse. This para- 
graph is Lamb's transition from the archaeological account to 
the theme; consider what application of the thought he uses to 
make the transition, and how skilfully he leads the paragraph on 
so as to end in the words of his subject, here put in small capitals. 

143 : 15. The most delicate. Observe, as a furthur element of 
structure, that this single sentence paragraph purports to lay down 
a kind of proposition, which is to be proved and maintained in 
what succeeds. It is a part of Lamb's plan in this Dissertation to 
adhere to the form and dignity of a learned treatise. 

144 : I. Childish treble, etc. Observe here how carefully Lamb 
uses softened terms to describe the pig's voice, here using Shake- 
speare's term "childish treble" (^As You Like It), instead of the 
■word we use, squeak, which latter would not so well fit the object 
he is endeavouring to describe. 

144 : 17. One ambrosian result. The whole paragraph, of which 
this is the conclusion, is noteworthy for the pains with which Lamb 
accumulates descriptive details to make realizable an exceedingly 
delicate subject, namely, what Lamb conceives to be the superlative 
of refined bodily taste. He seems to be labouring to describe a 
food from which all that is coarse or animal or of gluttonous sug- 
gestion is eliminated; hence his summarizing epithet ambrosian 



Notes 243 

borrowed from the food of the gods. With this descriptive para- 
graph one may well contrast the language used of Bo-bo's orgy of 
eating, 140 : 1-4, and the paragraph beginning at 140 : 26. One 
is inclined to think that Lamb's chief interest in writing this essay, 
as a sheer literary feat, was in achieving the descriptive triumph 
exemplified in this paragraph. 

144 : 22. The extreme sensibility. Note the implicit personifi- 
cation, or rather personal feeling, involved here. The conjunction 
of "radiant jellies" and "shooting-stars" may be Lamb's reminis- 
cence of a conceit of the metaphysical poet Donne, who in his 
Eclogues says : — 

" As he that sees a star fall runs apace, 
And finds a jelly in the place." 

This is in accord with old-time popular ideas. — On the dash at the 
end of the paragraph, see note on 123 : 14. 

145 : 8. Ere sin could blight, etc. Quoted from Coleridge's 
Epitaph on an Infant. The whole stanza runs : — 

" Ere Sin could blight, or Sorrow fade, 
Death came with friendly care ; 
The opening bud to Heaven conveyed. 
And bade it blossom there." 

Notice that in the second line, for friendly Lamb substitutes 
timely. Was this from carelessness, or for fiiner adaptation to 
Lamb's subject? — 12. Reeking sausages. From the fact that on 
159 : 2 Lamb uses the same epithet of sausages, one may con- 
clude that they were no favourite delicacy of his. — 14. Might be 
content to die. Reminiscences of the closing line of Milton's 
Epitaph on Shakespeare, changed a little in the borrowing, as usual 
with Lamb. 

145 : 15. The best of Sapors. A quaint word, in the manner 
if not the actual usage, of Sir Thomas Browne. The paragraph 
which it introduces is another of Lamb's tours de force of 



244 Notes 

description and fine discrimination. The descriptive words and 
antitiieses are worthy of careful study. 

146 : 3. He is — good throughout. Note how the dash is used 
here and compare note on 87 : i. 

146 : 13. Chicken. The plural without the -s, like/cze;/in the 
next line. — 14. " Tame villatic fowl." From Milton, Samson 
Agonisles, \. 1695. — 18. "Give everything." Lear's expression 
is, " I gave you all";. King Lear, ii. 4. 253. — I make my stand 
upon pig. In an essay entitled Thoughts on Presents of Game, 
Lamb records, however, a change of taste in later years: "Time 
was when Elia . . . preferred to all a roasted pig. But he dis- 
claims all such green-sickness appetites in future." 

146 : 26. My good old aunt. Probably the Aunt Hetty men- 
tioned in a similar connection in ChrisVs Hospital, 22: 22; or, as 
it is Elia writing, the whole story may be an invention or taken 
from some other person's experience. 

148 : I. (In a philosophical light merely) . Lamb keeps up the 
philosophical tone assumed at the beginning, and probably reminds 
us again of it because he is fantastically running the inquiry 
into rather attenuated questions for abstruse learning to indulge in. 
It is an imitation, however, of the learned trifling in which the 
Schoolmen used to indulge. 

148 : 9. When I was at St. Omer's. A French Jesuit College; 
where, on account of the casuistic questions which make a large 
part of the training, such a question as this would presumably be a 
natural subject of debate. Lamb puts the wording of the question 
in Latin, to intimate that in a college of sacred learning, like St. 
Omer's, the debate was conducted, like a learned disputation, in 
Latin. Of course Lamb was never there, though Elia might so 
represent himself. — 16. I forget the decision, naturally, of a 
question whose decision either way would amount to so little. 

148 : 17. His sauce should be considered. This paragraph 
reads like a kind of appendix, or supplement, added, in accordance 
with his humorous claim to be writing a Dissertation in the 



Notes 



245 



interest of thoroughness and exhaustiveness. At the same time, 
it will be noted that he makes this final paragraph a plea for what 
he really has at heart, fineness and delicacy of taste, as applied no 
less to the stomach than to the mind. 

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 

Pages 149-159 

Scarcely another essay of Lamb's could be found in which his 
keen interest in everything that pertains to childhood and inno- 
cence, and less directly to poverty and hardship, finds clearer ex- 
pression than in this essay on The Praise of Chimney- Sweepers. In 
his characteristic way, however, he disguises this sentiment under 
an appearance of interest in what is odd and out-of-the-way, — in 
a class of human beings of whom little is known or cared, and 
whose claim on attention is their dirt and grotesqueness. The 
sympathy that he betrays, too, is by no means of the maudlin kind 
such as people nowadays lavish on slum-dwellers and criminals and 
labouring children ; if chimney-sweepers are a wronged and abused 
class, their wrongs come out between the lines; but meanwhile he 
gets into their life and so to say their mind, and kindles a tender 
sympathy on the part of the reader, as no amount of sentimental 
weeping or railing against social iniquities could do. The tone 
and feeling of the essay, for what they reveal of the heart of Charles 
Lamb, may be called eminently healthy. 

As to its style, while to an unusual degree it reflects Lamb's 
quaint personality, it would be for that very reason a disastrous 
style to imitate. The student will do well to go over the essay 
with this thought in mind. To use such odd words and turns of 
expression, unless one had both Lamb's temperament and experi- 
ence in literature, would be sheer affectation; and it would incur 
inevitably the vice of pretentious expression known as " fine writ- 
ing." Yet when under these strangely worded sentences we read 
Lamb's personality, we read with approval and delight. 



246 Notes 



149 : 3. Through their first nigritude, or blackness; just such 
a word as Sir Thomas Browne would employ. — It is worth noting 
how characteristically he chooses chimney-sweepers at a time which 
connotes as little as possible of the dirt and squalor of their occu- 
pation, nothing at all of the inhumanity connected with it, and as 
much as possible of childlike innocence and tenderness. With 
this paragraph may be compared the paragraph of the foregoing 
essay in which he discriminates the fitting age of pigs for roasting; 
see 143 : 17 ff. — 7. Like the peep peep of a young sparrow. 
Their professional cry oi sweep, sweep had been used by Blake in his 
Songs of Innocence as if it were ^weep, ^weep, ''weep, \veep — per- 
haps because Blake was touched by their pitiable lot. Lamb, at once 
more prettily and more tenderly, compares their cry to the sparrow's 
note, and even improves on that. 

149 : 10. I have a kindly yearning. In the next line but one he 
calls them "these young Africans of our own growth"; it is note- 
worthy also that on 105 : 5 he expresses similar " yearnings of 
tenderness " for negroes. — 11. Innocent blacknesses. Note that 
Lamb leaves this paragraph punctuated only with the dash, like the 
paragraph, 144 : 19-24, as if it were an unfinished collection of 
details which the reader might supplement with further descriptive 
epithets as they occur to him. 

149 : 13. Almost clergy imps. Note the playful paradox here; 
also how the idea of the paragraph is conformed to the clergy 
figure. 

149 : 21. As he went sounding on, etc. This does not fit the 
operation of crawling into a chimney; the form of his imagined 
journey is rather an echo of the idea of Fauces Averni and the Vir- 
gilian scenery. Doubtless too Lamb has here a reminiscence of a 
line in Wordsworth's Excursion, Book iii : — " Went sounding on, 
a dim and perilous way" ; — a line the component phrases of which 
are also to be found in Wordsworth's tragedy of The Boj'derers. — 
150 : 6. I seem to remember, etc. Just such a story as a nurse 
would tell a small child to enforce a childish moral. — 11. Appari- 



Notes 247 



tion of a child. This stage direction comes in Macbeth, iv. i, 
to indicate part of the symbolism by which the ominous future 
is revealed to Macbeth. 

150 : 21. The sweet wood yclept sassafras. In these para- 
graphs descriptive of sassafras tea and its effect on chimney- 
sweepers it is, especially, that Lamb indulges in his " fine " lan- 
guage, perhaps as if conscious that he is after all describing a rather 
insignificant thing. The words and phrases need not be pointed 
out; but one feels that Lamb is in his playful vein at such 
phrases as "infusion of milk and sugar"; "adventured to dip"; 
" commended ingredients"; " a cautious premonition to the olfac- 
tories"; "attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions"; "o'er- 
night vapours"; "sumptuous basin"; "eased of the o'ercharged 
secretions," and many more. In what sense might this use of 
language be called ironical? 

151 : 17. Too much of bitter wood. This figure is moulded on 
the contrasted suggestion of "sweet wood" in 1. 21 of the pre- 
vious page. — 22. Penniless. On 24 : 1 1 Lamb uses the word 
pennyless, with a different spelling, to connote a different shade of 
meaning. — 27. Than philosophy can inculcate. In the original 
essay, as published in the Lojidon Magazine, Lamb wrote " ex- 
plicate." The remark betrays partly Lamb's evident interest in the 
phenomena of bodily taste, and partly the elaborate trifling which 
his fine language has already advertised. 

152 : 22. Him shouldest thou haply encounter. In this sen- 
tence Lamb seems to bring his exaggerated style to the climax; 
and he begins with the old-fashioned device of placing the object 
before the verb, thus making a quaint sounding sentence construc- 
tion, in which the odd wording and phraseology will fit. 

153 : 5 ff. The rest of the essay, it will be observed, is in much 
less inflated style than what has just been noted; though of course 
Lamb's idiosyncrasies of diction are not lacking. Does the some- 
what different character of the subject-matter explain this ? 
— 9. Something more than forgiveness. Note how accurately 



248 Notes 

he shades his feeling toward the jocularity of chimney-sweepers 
by this indirect expression. — It will be remembered that the title of 
the essay is The Praise of Chimney- Szveepers ; he is finding reasons 
why they may be praised. It will be worth while to consider, in 
the paragraphs from here to 156 : 15, and to put into definite state- 
ment, the ascending scale of evidence for according them not only 
tolerance but respect. These reasons are of course not formal and 
systematic, but fanciful, not to say whimsical; but even so they afford 
evidence of Lamb's dehcate sensibility. — 16. There he stood, etc. 
Study carefully the construction of this very irregular sentence, — how 
he breaks it up entirely by his parenthesis about Hogarth, and has 
to begin again at 1. 24 by repeating the opening words. — 21. Such 
a joy, snatched out of desolation. May not Lamb's keen feeling 
of this, in the squalid life of the chimney-sweeper, contain much of 
the secret of his extravagant praise? May it not really be that his 
heart aches for the class, and he passes it off, according to his custom, 
in fun ? Compare Introduction, p. 18. — 22. Hogarth ( 1 697-1 764) 
was an eminent painter of the eighteenth century, who devoted him- 
self especially to pictures of the customs of his day, and pictures, 
often in series, containing a moral lesson. He was a humorist as 
well as painter, and much of his work, while rugged and strong, 
verges on caricature. The name of one of his celebrated paintings. 
The March to Finchley, is given here. 

154 : 6. To "air" them as frugally as possible. The word 
"air'''' in this sense is very commonly used nowadays; it would seem 
that here it was just coming into vogue. The line " I beg but leave to 
air this jewel," in Cyi7iheline, ii, 4. 96, may have furnished Lamb the 
suggestion. — 13. A sable cloud, etc., quoted from Milton, Comzis, 
1. 221.—- 22. Almost infantile abductions. Lamb may be hinting 
in his gentle way at what was a notorious evil of his day; which, how- 
ever, he uses not by way of invective, but to account for the finer 
manners observable in these waifs. — 25. Many noble Rachels. 
'^t^ Jeremiah xxxi. 15, a prophecy brought up in Matthezv ii. 18, in 
connection with the mourning caused by the massacre of the infants 



Notes 



249 



in Bethlehem. — 28. The recovery of the young Montagu. Edward 
Mortley Montagu (1713-1776), who seemed to have an irresistible 
bent for wandering, which led him to become a great traveller. He 
ran away several times from school, and during one time in his life 
was a chimney-sweeper. 

155 : 3. At Arundel Castle, in Sussex, the seat of the dukes of 
Norfolk, whose family name was Howard. No trace of this story 
can be found in the legends of Arundel Castle; it is probably either 
Lamb's invention, or attributed to this place from some other. — 
9. Where Venus lulled Ascanius. Reference to Virgil, ^neid, 
i. 691. 

156 : 12. This sentiment of a pre-existent state. Lamb's 
explanation of this nobility in chimney-sweepers is of course only 
half in earnest; but the idea was probably a current subject of 
philosophical inquiry in his time. Wordsworth, it will be recalled, 
founded his Ode on Intimations of Imi?iortality on the idea of pre- 
existence, though he does not commit himself to the truth of it. 

156 : 16. My pleasant friend Jem White, whom in a foot-note 
to his essay On some of the Old Actors Lamb calls "my merry friend 
Jem White," was a schoolmate of Lamb's at Christ's Hospital, and 
a much esteemed friend. As the context shows, he was a humor- 
ist; he was also something of a man of letters. — 157: 16. James 
White. Note that when, as head waiter, he has the dignity of being 
in charge of the first table, he is called by his formal name, James 
White. — 1 8. Bigod. By this name, borrowed from the family name 
of the old-time Earls of Norfolk, Lamb designates his friend John 
Fenwick; if one may be called a friend who was an inveterate bor- 
rower of money and ne'er-do-weel. In the essay on The Two 
Races of Men, under this same name Bigod, it is said of him : ** In 
his perigesis, or triumphant progress thoughout this island, it has 
been calculated that he laid a tithe part of the inhabitants under 
contribution. . . . With such sources, it was a wonder how he con- 
trived to keep his treasury always empty." — 20. Rochester in his 
maddest days. James Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647- 1680), 



250 



Notes 



was one of the most notorious of the wits and boon companions 
of Charles II. — 158 : 4. Whereat the universal host, etc. The 
expression is modelled on Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 541-543 : — 

" At which the universal host upsent 
A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond 
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night." 

— 159 : 5. Golden lads and lasses, etc. From the first stanza 
of a song in Cymbeline, iv. 2. 259, quoted probably from memory. 
Shakespeare's words are, " Golden lads and girls all must," etc. 
The opening lines are : — 

" Fear no more the heat o' the sun, 
Nor the furious winter's rages ; 
Thou thy worldly task hast done, 
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages ; " 

The poet Tennyson on his death-bed called for Shakespeare's works 
and died with his hand resting on this song. 

159 : 10. Among the pens, i.e. the booths or enclosures of 
the Fair. — 12. The glory of Smithfield departed forever. The 
expression was later adopted in a letter announcing, in 1855, the 
end of Bartholomew Fair. 

DREAM- CHILDREN; A REVERIE 

Pages 160-165 

This short piece, which Mr. E. V. Lucas, one of Lamb's recent 
editors, calls " in some ways, I think, his most perfect prose work," 
is called, A Reverie. The children it describes, we are told at 
the outset, are Dream- Children, but the manner of telling has 
little if anything of a dreamy character; so that it is with some- 
thing like surprise that we find the narrator waking up at the end 
(165 : 16) and revealing that all was unreal, "such stuff as dreams 
are made of." The essay represents at its purest Lamb's favourite 
vein of reflection : on the simple pure mind of children, on old and 



Notes 251 



decayed things full of memories, and on those who are or have been 
dear to him. It was published a few months after the death of his 
brother, John Lamb, who is one of the persons described in the 
essay; and doubtless embodies sentiments set in motion by his 
death. Two or three months after the essay was published, Lamb 
wrote to Wordsworth : " We are pretty well save colds and rheu- 
matics, and a certain deadness to everything, which I think I may 
date from poor John's Loss. . . . Deaths overset one, and put one 
out long after the recent grief." 

We can feel the distinctive style of this essay best, perhaps, by 
thinking how it compares with the essays just read. It has no 
touch of the elaborate quaintness so characteristic of a large part 
of the essay on The Praise of Chimney- Stueepey's, nor of the la- 
boured descriptive writing of the Dissertation tipon Roast Pig, nor 
of the analytic treatment of minds and temperaments in Imper- 
fect Syfnpathies and other essays. It reads as if for once Lamb 
would discard all self-conscious literary effort and surrender him- 
self to the spontaneous thoughts of the childlike mind. And 
the result, as can be felt rather than analysed, is a very perfect 
charming piece of prose. It will be noted that the whole piece 
is comprised in a single paragraph ; as a single topic, indeed, 
it does not bear articulation into headings and stages, as the para- 
graph division would indicate. Nor does it need much annota- 
tion : it is simply to be read and enjoyed for its own sake. 

160 : 4. My little ones. The reverie is told as if it were a 
father speaking to his children, and the relationships — of great- 
grandmother, uncle, etc. — are conformed to this ; still the expres- 
sion " my little ones " leaves the relationship undefined. — 6. Their 
great-grandmother Field. In the essay on Mackery End, in 
Hertfordshire, Lamb says, " My grandmother was a Bruton, 
married to a Field" (46 : 3). As transpires later in this 
essay (1. 21), this grandmother was the housekeeper in one 
of the large old English country mansions to be found in all parts 
of the country. So far he is relating facts of his own family his- 



252 Notes 

tory ; when, however, he puts this great house in Norfolk he is 
departing from the fact, perhaps to keep from too strict identifica- 
tion with reality. The house, which was in Hertfordshire, was 
Blakesware, the family seat of the Plumers, Mrs, Field's employ- 
ers. Lamb has described it as it was in its decay in his essay, 
Blakesmoor in H — shir-e. In connection with one of the clerks in 
South-Sea House, also (75 : 10), he refers to "the Plumers of Hert- 
fordshire." — 7. A hundred times bigger, etc It was a large 
house indeed, but this is of course given in the exaggerated lan- 
guage of childish feehng. — 8. The scene ... of the tragic in- 
cidents, etc. The ballad of The Children in the Wood comes from 
Norfolk, as Lamb puts this house in Norfolk ; though the house 
he has in mind was in Hertfordshire, the adjoining county. By 
so doing he connects the scene of the story with the carvings on 
the chimney-piece (1. 13). The story of the Children in the Wood 
was a great favourite with Lamb, both from the ballad and from 
Morton's play, which latter he has several times referred to ; 
see 58 : 2-4; 113 : 25. — 17. One of her dear mother's looks. 
One of the charming things to be noted in this piece is the silent 
responses on the part of the children, and how these correspond to 
the sentiment of what is narrated ; see here : 161 : 10 ; 18 ; 21 ; 
162 : 9 ; 163 : 10 ; 164 : 21 ; 165 : 2. These silent responses 
articulate the piece into a kind of dream dialogue, in which on 
the children's part looks and actions take the place of speech. — 
25. A newer and more fashionable mansion. A residence built 
by William Plumer at Gilston in Hertfordshire, a few miles from 
Blakesware. It was not "in the adjoining county" (161 : 1) : it 
is so represented here, however, because Lamb has chosen to put 
the old house in Norfolk; see note on 160 : 6. — 161 : 18. 
Spread her hands. What thought on Alice's part would Lamb 
imply by this ? — 24. A cruel disease, called a cancer. Mrs. Field 
died of cancer of the breast in 1792. — 27. Because she was so 
good and religious. Note that the story told to the children, 
while full of the purest religious feeling, is not at all "goody- 



Notes 253 

goody," nor does it draw a moral lesson apart from what the 
account contains intrinsically. — 162 : 2. An apparition of two 
infants. " There is a legend in the Plumer family concerning the 
mysterious death of two children and the loss of the baronetcy 
thereby— Sir Walter Plumer, who died in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, being the last to hold the title" (Lucas). Many old English 
houses have their mysterious legends of this kind. In the essay 
on Blakesmoor in H — shire Lamb mentions " that haunted room 

— in which old Mrs. Battle died — whereinto I have crept, but 
always in the day-time, with a passion : and a sneaking curiosity, 
terror-tainted, to hold communication with the past." — 13. The 
old busts of the Twelve Caesars, In Blakesmoor in H^shire, 
too. Lamb mentions these busts and their effect on his childish 
imagination : " Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble 
Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars — stately 
busts in marble — ranged round: of whose countenances, young 
reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, 
had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had my love. There 
they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality." 

— 163 : 1 7. Their uncle, John L . John Lamb, Charles Lamb's 

elder brother, had died on October 26, 1821 ; and this essay was 
published in the London Magazine, in January, 1822. This part 
of the essay may be regarded as a kind of tribute to his memory, 
written while the loss was still fresh; the children, 164 : 21, are 
represented as in mourning for their uncle. In the essay on My 
Relations Lamb gives an extended description of his brother's 
eccentricities of character, representing him as his cousin James 
Elia (compare this essay, last line). A few words may here be 
quoted. "James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her uni- 
ties, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we feel, we can- 
not explain them. The pen of Yorick, and of none since his, could 
have drawn J. E. entire — those fine Shandian lights and shades, 
which make up his story." Then, after a masterly analysis of his 
contradictory traits of character, the account concludes : " Do I 



254 Notes 



mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, or upbraid, my 
cousin ? Marry, heaven, and all good manners, and the under- 
standing that should be between kinsfolk, forbid ! — With all the 
strangeness of this stra^igest of the Elias — I would not have him 
one jot or tittle other than he is ; neither would I barter or ex- 
change my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, and everyway 
consistent kinsman breathing." — 164:1. A lame- footed boy. It 
is not clear that Lamb is here speaking of his own experience ; 
though a peculiarity of his walking, in later life, was, that he was 
plantigrade, or as we say, flat-footed. — 4. He became lame-footed 
too. By the fall of a stone on his leg, in 1796, John Lamb be- 
came a cripple for life. In 1. 20, Lamb mentions " when the 
doctor took off his limb " ; but it cannot be ascertained otherwise 
that John Lamb's leg was actually amputated. In a letter to 
Coleridge soon after the accident Lamb reports that the doctor 
"gives us every hope that there will be no need of amputation." 
— 27. I courted the fair Alice W — n. In his essay on New 
Year's Eve, Lamb mentions this Alice W — n in a similar way : 
"Methinks it is better that I should have pined away seven of 
my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer 
eyes, of Alice W — n, than that so passionate a love-adventure 
should be lost." This, as we see, is an anticipation of Tennyson's 

" 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all." 

It is hard to make out, however, that this maiden was anything 
more than a kind of dream or abstraction of Lamb's, into which he 
imported his youthful fancies of love. As early as 1796, v^hen 
Mary Lamb became insane, he gave " his solemn engagement that 
he w^ould take her under his care for life " (see Introduction, p. 17) ; 
and with this obligation he gave up all thoughts of marriage 

(though see note introductory to Barbara S , p. 192). 

There has indeed been suggested, as the original of Alice W — n, 
a certain Ann Simmons, who lived near Blakesware; and this con- 



Notes 255 



jecture is strengthened by the fact that she married a Mr. Bartrum, 
or Bartram (compare 165: 12); but not much can be 
concluded from this. The whole matter is very likely one of 
Lamb's mystifications. — 165 : 13. We are only what might have 
been. So we must sum up the meaning of this strangely beautiful 
reverie. — 14. The tedious shores of Lethe. Lamb gets this idea 
from Virgil, ^neid, vi. 748 f., a passage of which the translation 
is : " All these when they have travelled round the circle of a 
thousand years, God summons in mighty throngs to the river of 
Lethe, that so, forgetful of the past, they may go back to visit 
again the vault of the sky, and begin without reluctance to return 
to the body." What Virgil describes as waiting for return to earth, 
in the transmigration of souls. Lamb represents as waiting for 
existence. — 18. The faithful Bridget {i.e. his sister, Mary Lamb) 
unchanged . . . JohnL. (whom he himself explains as James Elia) 
was gone forever. This was the end of his tribute to the brother, 
who never seems to have been very congenial in life, but whose 
dearness to Lamb was realized after death; see 164 : 15. A further 
reference is made to him as if he were a stranger, in the foot-note at 
bottom of p. 72. 

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 
Pages 166-176 

Some slight disguises of date and circumstances excepted, this 
essay is a true account of the facts of Charles Lamb's hfe, and 
a still truer transcript of his inner sensations and feelings. So 
momentous a change in life as the transition from work to leisure, 
from daily care for income to assured provision for all reasonable 
wants, could not fail to be a subject which, as a mere psychological 
study, would appeal to him vividly; and such experience was not 
imagined, but real. The circumstances of the case may best be 
presented by transcribing the minute of the Directors of the East 
India Company on the date of March 29, 1825 : " Resolved that 



256 Notes 

the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb, of the Accountant-general's 
office, on account of certified ill health, be accepted, and it appear- 
ing that he has served the Company faithfully for ^^ years, and is 
now in receipt of an income of ;^ 730 per annum, he be allowed a 
pension of ^^450 ... to commence from this day." 

Born in 1775, at the time of his retirement Lamb was fifty years 
old. He lived nearly ten years after this, years in which, still as 
years go in middle life, he could have what many long for, leisure 
to do just what he pleased. He had in himself, too, resources 
such as most business men lack (cf. 171 : 2); his life's real inter- 
ests, indeed, were so predominantly beyond the accountant's office 
that in time used out of working hours he had conquered an 
eminent position as man of letters. The coming ten years ought, 
it would seem, to have been his best and most fruitful literary 
years. They did not, however, turn out so. He had already done 
about all of his best and mOst characteristic work. In the April 
number of the London Magazine for 1825 appeared his Barbara 
S- , which of course must have been written before his retire- 
ment; and of the essays that we have read in this edition this was 
the latest. The Magazine itself, too, though passing into a new 
series, had long been declining; a fact which Lamb, who was by 
far the most important contributor, felt keenly. Of the February 
number of this year he wrote to Bernard Barton : " Our second 
Number is all trash. What are T. and H. [the publishers, Taylor 
and Hessey] about ? It is whip sillabub, ' thin sown with aught 
of profit or delight.' Thin sown ! not a germ of fruit or corn. 
Why did poor Scott die ! [Its first and ablest editor.] There was 
comfort in writing with such associates as were his little band of 
scribblers, some gone away, some affronted away, and I am left as 
the solitary widow looking for watercresses." In August, 1825, it 
was sold to other publishers, " indeed a dead weight," as Lamb 
described it; and its subsequent history is of little interest. So 
with Lamb, in many ways " the good old days were dead." He 
was set free from the irksome drudgery of his clerkship, only to 



Notes 257 



find that with all its austere absorption of his energies it had done 
him more good than he had realized. The present essay has 
between the lines many hints of this; though lightly touched and 
charming, like all of Lamb's work, it is shadowed with a more than 
rhetorical melancholy. 

The two mottos prefixed to the essay originally stood over the 
two parts into which the essay was divided; the point where its 
division occurred is on 173: 27, "A fortnight has passed," etc. 
The reader will note the change of sentiment in the two parts 
of the essay. To the present editor the second part seems less 
sincere, more as if, in bending himself to accept his new and 
unwonted leisure, the author were whistling to keep his cour- 
age up, under an uneasy sense that his life's fruitful activity is 
over. 

166: I. To waste the golden years of thy life. With this 
judgement passed upon his years of desk-work contrast his light- 
hearted, whimsical account of his occupation in Oxford in the 
Vacation ; see 77 : 14 f. " I confess that it is my humour, my 
fancy — in the fore-part of the day, when the mind of your man of 
letters requires some relaxation — ... to while away some good 
hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, raw silks, 
piece-goods, flowered or otherwise." All this, which he chose to 
describe as his recreation, has here become " the irksome confine- 
ment of an office." — 6. To forget that there are such things as 
holidays. In the same essay, in spite of his playful identification 
of drudgery with amusement, he speaks of holidays and saints' days 
in such terms as to betray what a welcome relief they were. They 
were, after all, " sprinklings of freedom" (78 : 19) ; and so far from 
forgetting that there were such things, — "I was as good as an 
almanac in those days. I could have told you such a saint's day 
falls out next week, or the week after" (79: 9-1 1). In Christ'' s 
Hospital, too, the holidays are recalled with much zest. 

166: 10. Six and thirty years, more correctly three and thirty 
years, as indicated in the Directors' minute quoted above. Lamb, 

ESSAYS OF ELIA — I 7 



258 Notes 



after six months' employment in the South-Sea House, passed to the 
East India House in the spring of 1792. 

166 : 18. It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but, etc. 
Lamb is by no means the only one to be repelled by the austere 
gloom of a London Sunday; it is indeed almost proverbial. Char- 
acteristically, however, he does not rail at the Puritan cause of it, 
nor does he advocate a reform in Sunday observance; he makes 
his objection to it personal to himself. In the original essay, after 
the word recreation (167 : i), he appended the following foot-note : 
"Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's day, could 
distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of recreation ; 
and while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all amusements 
(even to the walking out of nursery maids with their little charges 
into the fields) upon the Sabbath; in the lieu of the superstitious 
observance of the Saints' days, which they abrogated, they humanely 
gave to the apprentices, and poorer sort of people, every alternate 
Thursday for a day of entire sport and recreation. A strain of piety 
and policy to be commended above the profane mockery of the 
Stuarts and their Book of Sports." — 167 : 5. Those eternal bells. 
London is, or has been, a notable place for the ringing of church 
bells; the manner of ringing them, too, in peals and chimes and con- 
tinuous swing, may well become a strain on sensitive nerves. — 21. 
Look anything but comfortable. Note that this description of the 
effects of Sunday is a kind of presage of the larger subject, — the 
effect of an unlimited leisure. Did Lamb, as a matter of literary 
construction, introduce this paragraph with such intent? 

167 : 24. My native fields of Hertfordshire. It is as James 
Elia that Lamb says this. Lamb himself was London born and 
bred; his mother's family, however, as we have seen, came from 
Hertfordshire. 

168 : 15. My health and my good spirits flagged. One reason 
given for his retirement, as we have seen above, was " certified 
ill health." The fact is evident also from numerous letters of his 
written at this period. — 16. A dread of some crisis. In his 



Notes 259 

delicately strung, nervous temperament his ill health would quite 
naturally take such form. What he here ascribes to ill health he 
has already attributed to the temperament of the cashier of the South- 
Sea House (see 69 : 20) : " Melancholy as a gib-cat over his 
counter all the forenoon, I think I see him, making up his cash (as 
they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one about 
him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to imagine himself 
one; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possibility of his be- 
coming one.'' Perhaps this description of the terrors that began 
to invade his imagination may indicate that after all a clerk's occu- 
pation did not sit easy upon him, that he was very close to the truth 
when he made Elia say (67 : 25) : " Living accounts and account- 
ants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring." With this compare 
168 : 11-13. W^e cannot think that his life was ever so naturally 
in the accountant's element as, for instance, John Tipp (72 : 3), 
who " ' thought an accountant the greatest character in the world, 
and himself the greatest accountant in it.' " 73 : 17. " With Tipp 
form was everything. His life was formal. His actions seemed 
ruled with a ruler." In short, as an accountant Lamb was out of 
his element; his virtual breakdown at fifty seems to prove it. — 22. 
The wood had entered into my soul. Lamb records a similar 
thing of his book-worm friend G. D. in Oxfo^^d in the Vacation 
(82 : 17) : " With long poring, he is grown almost into a book." 
It is Lamb's version of the idea expressed in one of Shakespeare's 
Sonnets (cxi) : — 

" And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." 

168 : 28. L ,the junior partner in the firm. The name, as 

also the name B below, is not identifiable; to represent his busi- 
ness as a partnership firm, too, is one of Lamb's disguises; so also 
the date of his release, the 12th of April, instead of March 29. The 
disguise is elaborately kept up in 170 : 8, " Gratitude forbids me to 
conceal their names," a sure indication this, in Lamb's habit of 
playful irony, that their names are concealed. Needless to say, all 



i6o Notes 

these names are feigned. — 170 : 12. EstO perpetua ! as if he had 
said, " Long live the firm of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, and 
Lacy." 

170 : 13. I felt stunned, overwhelmed. In a letter written to 
Bernard Barton, he says : " Dear B. B. — My spirits are so tumultuary 
with the novelty of my recent emancipation, that I have scarce 
steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a letter." — 15. 
Thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. It may 
be noted of all Lamb's minute descriptions of states of mind, his 
favourite literary employment, that none of them are descriptions 
of simple or unmixed states; there is, as here, a kind of paradoxi- 
cal combination of moods or traits, a kind of spiritual colHsion, 
about all of them. Note how this furnishes the key for the ampli- 
fication in all this paragraph. — 171 : 16. That's born. A quota- 
tion, with one or two words changed, from Middleton's The Mayor 
of Queenborough : — 

" I know no more the way to temporal rule, 
Than he that's born and has his years come to him 
In a rough desert." 

Query : does Lamb substitute " some green desert " to fit the senti- 
ment better to his own hope of coming fruitful years? Note the 
words "calculating upon," 1. 19. 

172 : I. As long as any preceding thirty. This came true of 
the succeeding ten years of Lamb's fife in a way not quite con- 
templated here. He thought, doubtless, of busy days and hours at 
his most congenial pursuits; as a matter of fact much time hung 
heavy on his hands, and he could hardly think what to do. The 
second part of this essay (see especially p. 174) already betrays 
something of this. 

172 : 12. A Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard. The name 
of the Tragedy was The Vestal Virgin; or. The Roman Ladies. 
Among the half-idle occupations to which Lamb devoted himself 
in the ensuing years, as a refuge from ennui, was searching for the 
noteworthy passages of the Garrick plays in the British Museum 



Notes 261 

which he contributed in 1826 to Hone's Table Book; and the 
passage here quoted was included in a collection entitled Seriates 
Fragments at the end. 

172 : 20. To visit my old desk-fellows. In the letter to Bar- 
ton from which a quotation has been given above (note on 170 : 13) 
he writes : "I went and sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk 
yester morning; and deuce take me if T had not yearnings at leav- 
ing all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving 
them in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag." — 173 : 23. My "works! " A 
conceit of Lamb's which he was fond of repeating. In the Preface 
prefixed to the Last Essays of Elia, published 1833, in which he 
announced the death of Elia, he thus speaks of a visit to his place 
of business in search of his surviving manuscripts : " They pointed 
out in a most obliging manner the desk, at which he had been 
planted for forty years; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, in 
his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly than his few 
printed tracts, might be called his ' works.' " He speaks in the same 
way of his book-keeping also in his Aiitobiography. — 24. More 
MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left. St. Thomas Aquinas, 
(1225 or -27-1274), the great theologian of the Roman Catholic 
Church, filled seventeen folio volumes with his works, as they were 
collected and published in 1570. — 25. My mantle I bequeath 
among ye. An allusion to Elijah's mantle falling on Elisha; 
see 2 Kings ii, 13. 

173 : 27. A fortnight has passed. The second part of the origi- 
nal essay, beginning here, opens a new stage in the description of 
his feelings, the stage in which he becomes more wonted to his new 
manner of life. — 174: i. I boasted of a calm. Compare espe- 
cially 171: 2-14. — 4. I missed my old chains, forsooth. Lord 
Byron has used the same idea at the end of his Prisoner of Chillon : — 

" The very walls and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are : — even I 
Regained my freedom with a sigh." 



262 Notes 

— 6. A poor Carthusian. See note on 135 : i. — 21. The gayer 
flags of Pall Mall. In the fashionable quarters of the West 
End; a contrast to the business sections of the City, where are Fish 
Street Hill, Fenchurch Street, and Mincing Lane, just mentioned. 

— 22. The Elgin marbles, which are among the most valued treas- 
ures of the British Museum, are carvings procured from the Parthenon 
and other ruined buildings of Athens by Lord Elgin, and deposited 
in the Museum in 181 6. — 24. Time stands still in a manner to me. 
This sentence may be regarded as the key to this section of the 
essay. — 175: 9. That unfortunate failure of a holiday. See 
paragraph beginning 166 : 18. and note there. — 18. Lucretian 
pleasure. An allusion to the opening lines of Lucretius, Z>e Rerum 
Natura, II, which have given a stock expression to the language. 
The lines are : — 

"Suave, marl magno turbantibus aequora ventis, 
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem ; 
Non quia vexari quemquam est iucunda voluptas, 
Set quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est ; " 

or in Mallock's translation : " It is sweet when winds are troubling 
the waters on the great deep, to watch from land the great labours 
of another ; not because there is any light-hearted pleasure in 
knowing that another is suffering, but because it is pleasant to 
realize from what sufferings you yourself are free." Lucretian 
pleasure this ; pagan, not Christian. — 23. Nor tOO little to do. 
Here Lamb strikes perversely, and only half sincerely, into his vein 
of ironical eulogy of idleness. It reads, as has been intimated 
above, like whistling to keep his courage up. In the London 
Magazine, however, after the words " what is it all for ? " 
1. 22, Lamb supports the sentiment by citing some verses from 
Cowley, and also the following lines of his own, " written in my 
Clerk state " : — 

"Who first invented work — and bound the free 
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down 



Notes 263 



To the ever-haunting importunity 
Of business, in the green fields, and the town — 
To plough, loom, anvil, spade — and oh! most sad, 
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood ? 
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, 
Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad 
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, 
That round and round incalculably reel — 
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel — 
In that red realm from whence are no returnings , 
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye 
He, and his thoughts, keep pensive workyday ! " 

He refers also, under another attribution, to an earlier sonnet of his 
own, to which, as he says, " I subscribe . . . toto corde^'' of which a 
few lines are : — 

They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, 
That like a millstone on man's mind doth press, 
Which only works and business can redress : 
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, 
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke." 

Lamb lived to find such sentiments only half true. — 24. NOTHING- 
TO DO. " Positively the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, 
and next to that perhaps — good works." (From a letter of Lamb's 
to Bernard Barton.) — 26. I am altogether for the life contem- 
plative. 

" But might I, fed with silent meditation, 
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation — 
Improbus labor, which my spirits hath broke — 
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit." 

A further quotation from the Sonnet given above. — 176 : I. Those 
accursed cotton-mills. An anticipation, but in entirely different 
motive and spirit, of Ruskin's antipathy to modern commercialism. 
— 4. As low as to the fiends. Quotation from Hamlet, ii. 2. 519. 



264 Notes 

176 : 5. I am no longer * * *. In the original form of the essay 
he had "J — s D — n," and signed the essay "J. D.," giving his 
address as " Beaufort Terrace, Regent Street; late of Ironmonger 
Court, Fenchurch Street." — 6. Retired Leisure. The phrase is 
quoted from Milton, // Penseroso, 1. 49. — 7. Known by my 
vacant face and careless gesture. With this sentence and the 
succeeding Lamb begins to reveal the fact that he is not vi^holly 
serious in his praise of unhmited leisure; he is paying for it in 
some disadvantages which give the thought a sad connotation. 
— i8. Nor with any settled purpose. This describes his appearance 
and feelings after a fortnight had passed (173 : 27), and will do for 
a literary description of Elia. Of Lamb himself, however, Mr. 
Dykes Campbell writes : "When the summer of 1826 came round, 
Lamb, having had a full year's experience of freedom from the 
'drudgery of the desk's dead wood,' felt that some kind of regular 
employment was a necessity." Accordingly he engaged in the work 
on the Garrick plays mentioned in note 172 : 12. Of this work he 
wrote to Barton: "It is a sort of office to me; hours ten to four, 
the same." — 13. The state of the opera. This furnishes occasion 
for his Latin quotation immediately succeeding; the word opera, it 
will be observed, is merely the plural of opus, and from the same 
root as operatum. — So with these words, to an unrealized degree 
prophetic. Lamb concludes his memorial of his retirement from 
task- work. 



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